CAT. 8

2013
4.5| 2h49m| en
Details

A research program abandoned by the best solar physicist when the Pentagon wanted to put it to military use has been resumed by his former deputy. Her incompetence and the Defense secretary's haste cause it to be tested too soon, stirring unprecedented solar flares, ultimately a plasma causing disasters on all continents. Only the genius can think of a way out, only to be victimized by the secretary, who needs to cover up. Even when it turns out the earth's core has stopped spinning, spelling an unimaginable seismic apocalypse, the genius must still evade special forces to stay free and save the world again

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Reviews

WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.
Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life
Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.
PanoactionImagineer Its a shame someone like Mathew Modine was suckered into this. He is good as usual at keeping a solid character portrayal but thats where it all ends. After that this is probably one of the hardest things I have ever made myself watch. A real lousy implementation of VFX. The fact that his partner did not complain to someone is totally unreal. Let us not forget of course the complete misrepresentation of scientific fact. Finally what happened to the payback against secretary of defense and his sidekick. The ending is a complete let down. Who ever funded this must be regretting it now! Don't waist your time unless you wan to see how not to make a sci-fi. This is more like a bad drama.
Warloq At the outset, let it be understood that there is virtually no suspension of disbelief to be found in this sci-fi folly.Science, and science fiction fans more importantly, understand that some scientific capital must be invested in a science fiction narrative to make it at least partially believable. No such investment occurred here, and therein lies the beginning of a bailout that never happened.The absence of suspension of disbelief is well supported. There clearly was a vulgar absence of scientific research within the arena's of the scientific disciplines upon which the (weak) foundation of this cinematic effort was based.Enough of this. Sci-fi fans of any stripe will understand the elements that are lacking. And that would be all of them. Satellites falling from orbit to impact Earth within MINUTES of critical solar events? International Space Station hitting the Earth and delivering an impact equivalent to the destruction delivered by hundreds of megatons of nuclear bombs? The I.S.S. is pretty much comprised of what amounts to little more than aluminum foil. The electro-magnetic effects of solar events assailing the Earth in mere seconds?It's hard not to laugh out loud at the sheer absurdity of these film elements. Oh wait. I did laugh. Out loud.The acting was careless and amateurish at best. Even veteran actor Matthew Modine delivered a performance that was stiff and over-rehearsed. The characters of the President and Vice President of the United States were just plain spooky and damned creepy. Personally, I feel the characters of the Prez and the Veep required lobotomies. That may seem a radical concept, but they *are* playing US politicians -- the majority of whom have already been lobotomized, I'd venture to guess. If you watch this film to its conclusion, I have the contact number for Lobotomies-R-Us.
bigal_a I watched this film yesterday with queasy disbelief. The simple fact is that nothing - but nothing - can fly between the earth and the sun in less than 8 minutes.That isn't susceptible to "as far as we know", either. It is the basis of one of the most tested, verified and successful scientific theories of all time.Even if a massive CME had been caused immediately by the incoming glittery beam of science-stuff, it could not have reached the earth in less than 16 minutes. And the sun is so big that like a big container ship, it doesn't exactly turn on a sixpence. By the time anything happened, the affected part of the sun would have turned away from the earth, and the CME would have missed.I would have had a lot more respect if there had been an "omigod" moment and a prediction that something nasty was coming in, say, 24 hours, and the film wouldn't have had to run for 24 hours to show it either.This is only one little point in a film I begrudge having spent the time to watch it. IMO it is a turd sandwich with really thin slices of bread either side.Saying, "hey, it's just SCIENCE FICTION, Negative Nancy" does not relieve the film of the responsibility to have at least one foot planted firmly in plausibility. They could have done this properly at no greater cost, with no impact on the story, and I would have given them kudos for having done so.No plausibility, no kudos. This film's nonsensical trashing of the scientific method does not render it any the more entertaining. It's just sloppy, rushed-looking and tedious.I shan't be watching it again.
wbblair3 I agree completely with Ed Blackadder's review. Why is it so very difficult for the writers of scripts that pretend to be "science" fiction to ask even a serious amateur science enthusiast to review their scripts (I'd do it for free) to catch their innumerable errors and misrepresentations of natural phenomenon? Did the writers of this bad joke sleep through their grade school and high school science classes? Apparently. And they must also believe that everyone else did, too.If you are a SCIENCE fiction fan, you'll want to skip this one unless you want to watch for a few laughs. However, that probably won't hold you through the entire show. I stopped watching to write this after the hilariously wrong satellite sequence about 20 minutes in. Gawd...

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