DOWNDRAFT
Canada/Czechoslovakia. 1996. Director - Michael Mazo, Screenplay - Christopher Hyde, Producers - Mazo, Lloyd A. Simandi & Deborah Thompson, Photography - Danny Nowak, Music - Peter Allen, Special Effects - North American Pictures S.R.O., Special Effects Supervisors - Jiri Berger & Vladimir Jehlicha, Production Design/Visual Effects Design - Charles Wood. Production Company - North American Pictures/Minotaur Films. Vincent Spano (Colonel Jack Brenner), Kate Vernon (Alexa Belekenyev), John Novak (Miles Standish), Paul Koslo (General George Washington Devlin), Sandra P. Grant (Babe), John Pyper-Ferguson (Spike), William S. Taylor (Rudy), Sean Fuller (Hawkins), Michael Spelchta (Mikey Brenner)
Plot: Jack Brenner, a US colonel falsely incarcerated in order to cover up the death of an out-of-control general, is granted his freedom if he will assemble his old team of nonconformist experts and break into a military bunker where a scientist has taken over and is threatening to fire nuclear missiles on China and the former Soviet Union. But once inside the bunker the mission is fraught by a killer cyborg hunting them, while above ground a general determines to do everything he can to ensure the secrets the bunker holds are not discovered.
For a B-budget action film that one enters with little expectation, `Downdraft' proves surprisingly worthwhile. What does takes one aback about it is the extraordinary busyness of its plot which manages to juggle enough subplots sufficient to serve as single plots for half-a-dozen films. Not only does it feature a missile bunker with a rogue scientist threatening to fire nuclear warheads, but it also throws in an about-to-explode hydrogen bomb boobytrap and an about-to-meltdown nuclear reactor. Also thrown in for the count are a killer android; an out-of-control AI which has melded with the scientist's mind; and an out-of-control general determined to sabotage efforts on the surface. That the film manages to keep so many subplots up in the air without losing the thread or confusing the viewer, is all credit to it. Naturally not all of these get entirely satisfying airings but the film manages to work them better than one might think. It all functions quite well within its modest budget - there is the feel it wants to open up with some more extravagant action sequences but still conducts itself quite respectably nevertheless with at least one sequence with the android shooting at the team in a descending elevator that is dramatically intense. A good degree of care and attention has also been given to making the hero and the film's `Dirty Dozen' team of characters seem believable and well-rounded.
Despite being set in the US and made by a company that call themselves North American Pictures, the film is actually a Canadian production that was shot in Czechoslovakia.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1998
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