Ah, yes, the “dumb college kids getting into trouble on vacation” genre. My favorite.

Josh Duhamel and his sister, Olivia Wilde, with her disposable friend derail their vacation plans after the bus they are on rolls down a hill in Brazil.

They meet someone who can speak Portuguese, Melissa George, and some brits also on vacation. What starts as going with the flow, partying, and making the best of the situation quickly becomes life or death when a local surgeon needs these “turistas” vital organs.

Even for this genre, the story and characters don’t really work. The “big bad” surgeon is menacing in one or two scenes and the rest of the time you and the other characters just shrug. At one point, his own henchman doesn’t take him seriously.

The “heroes” (victims) were boring. Only two times did Duhamel do something that was smart on a survival instinct level. In general, the characters employ the “flight” response for their situation and it ends up wasting a lot of time or worse. I like it better when at least one character looks at the situation and says, “time to make a stand or we won’t survive” but that never happens here.

Bottom line: there was nothing new and it never got very tense. Just harvest all their organs already!

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