This movie tries to capture the generational larger than life force of nature of "Twister" with the human drama of duty and loss of "Backdraft", but made with zero budget and double the run time. The result is a three hour journey into dullness and boredom.
The characters are very one dimensional and unlikable. The male protagonist is the maverick that has to do things his way and turns his nose up at authority. Nothing is done to make him have any kind of spiritual awakening and become a better person, rather they feed into this and give him his "I told you so" moment. The female protagonist pretty much dresses down everyone she addresses and walks around on a cloud of sanctimony. Everyone else follows the same cookie cutter archetypes - the grizzled veteran, the over anxious rookie, the stern boss that doesn't appreciate the main protagonist, etc. Added to the fact that they almost never have a nice thing to say to each other, you end up not caring about their fate because of their attitudes.
And the effects are just terrible and not well hid at all by people that either know or take pride in their craft. CGI fires and matte paintings of the burning forest that doesn't match the color of the real sky. Also, this being a New Zealand production acting like they are in Portland, Oregon, you would think they would have done a bit more research on the city. Instead, they represented a city of over 750k people with crisscrossing rivers and discernible landmarks with a housing subdivision with about 10 houses in the middle of the woods and made up wilderness locations and no mention of Mt. Hood.
This is a three hour disaster version of "Angela's Ashes". John Noble probably did this movie between The Two Towers and Return of the King because his wife needed a new pair of shoes. Wes Studi probably got a hernia doing this movie from carrying the entire cast on his back being far and away the best thing about this movie.
2/10 - Just rent Twister and Backdraft.
The characters are very one dimensional and unlikable. The male protagonist is the maverick that has to do things his way and turns his nose up at authority. Nothing is done to make him have any kind of spiritual awakening and become a better person, rather they feed into this and give him his "I told you so" moment. The female protagonist pretty much dresses down everyone she addresses and walks around on a cloud of sanctimony. Everyone else follows the same cookie cutter archetypes - the grizzled veteran, the over anxious rookie, the stern boss that doesn't appreciate the main protagonist, etc. Added to the fact that they almost never have a nice thing to say to each other, you end up not caring about their fate because of their attitudes.
And the effects are just terrible and not well hid at all by people that either know or take pride in their craft. CGI fires and matte paintings of the burning forest that doesn't match the color of the real sky. Also, this being a New Zealand production acting like they are in Portland, Oregon, you would think they would have done a bit more research on the city. Instead, they represented a city of over 750k people with crisscrossing rivers and discernible landmarks with a housing subdivision with about 10 houses in the middle of the woods and made up wilderness locations and no mention of Mt. Hood.
This is a three hour disaster version of "Angela's Ashes". John Noble probably did this movie between The Two Towers and Return of the King because his wife needed a new pair of shoes. Wes Studi probably got a hernia doing this movie from carrying the entire cast on his back being far and away the best thing about this movie.
2/10 - Just rent Twister and Backdraft.