There’s something almost bizarrely impressive about how little a film like “Sacrifice,” the latest from filmmaker Romain Gavras, has to say about the state of our world and yet how loudly it all continues on anyway. Despite gesturing towards urgent questions about our fragile existence and the ongoing environmental catastrophe we’re creating the conditions for every day, this supposed satire never follows through in any meaningful way on any of it. It’s mostly just profoundly glib before leaping at a potentially grim yet still empty conclusion that elicits little more than a shrug. While Gavras previously made the arresting, if slightly anarchic, “Athena,” whatever life he could tap into, there is nowhere to be found here. 
A film about a group of celebrities at an environmental conference in Greece who are kidnapped by what can only loosely be called “ecoterrorists” (as their backstory reveals their radical action comes from something more cultish in nature), “Sacrifice” very quickly reveals itself as being less this year’s “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” and more a flat riff on something closer to “Tropic Thunder.” Much of this is due to how it centers on a struggling action star named Mike Tyler (Chris Evans), who is looking for either redemption or at least some positive attention after having a meltdown surrounding a flamethrower that was caught on video. But don’t expect this to be some insightful skewering of Hollywood, as the jokes are all so broad and the targets such banal caricatures that it’s as unfunny as it is devoid of any depth. To say it misses the mark would be to overstate it, as it never aims with any conviction in the first place. 
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This is mainly because the film’s kidnappers, led by Anya Taylor-Joy’s superficially written Joan, are not actually directing any of their ire at the bigger issues surrounding environmental destruction. Instead, they are preoccupied with a ritual surrounding a volcano. They believe they need to carry out a very specific series of sacrifices and that they will avert a catastrophe. In other words, this is not a film about the environment or the real danger that comes from its destruction; instead, it turns this into a misdirect.

Just like the environmental conference itself, it is much more about the ego of the celebrities gathered and the way that Mike goes through a personal journey of sorts when he begins to form a connection with Joan. Each is clearly looking for something and finds it in the other, though the audience perpetually gets left with little to hold onto. As we set off into the surrounding environment for a meandering march to the volcano, all of which is sufficiently well shot and staged, you’re never given much of anything to care about on the journey. 
The script by Will Arbery and Garvas boasts one briefly funny joke surrounding applause that occurs early on, but that’s about the only moment that sticks out in the mind from the entire film. The more it sidesteps every potentially interesting path to go down, instead leaning into more forced twists and the will-they-won’t-they actually sacrifice themselves to the volcano question, the more that “Sacrifice” just starts to stall out. Even as Evans does a good job of authentically capturing his character’s arrogance (which could easily be read as a somewhat meta joke on the actor himself that he still plays along with), the material he’s working with is never all that interesting. It plays like an extended joke, only with painfully few laughs or blows landing, concluding with us being guided right up to the volcano’s edge for an ending whose only surprise is how unsurprising it is. That the film stares into the heart of a fiery inferno that could consume us all, yet has no heat of its own, ensures it never leaves any real mark on you.
Credit where credit is due, “Sacrifice” ultimately made me seriously consider the prospect of death while watching it. However, this mostly came from a desire for it all to end so we no longer had to keep enduring the inescapably vapid and shallow film unraveling before us. [D+]
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