CHILL FACTOR
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Warner Bros./Morgan Creek Director: Hugh Johnson Writer: Drew Gitlin & Mike Cheda Cast: Cuba Gooding Jr., Skeet Ulrich, Peter Firth, David Paymer
"Chill Factor" rips off the basic premise of Jan De Bont's 1994 nonstop action picture "Speed." In that eye-popping spectacle, Keanu Reeves plays an elite SWAT-team cop who is targeted by a psycho mastermind (Dennis Hopper), and led onto a city bus triggered to explode if its speed descends below 50 miles per hour. Similarly in Hugh Johnson's thriller "Chill Factor," menacingly blue crystals to be used for chemical warfare must be kept on ice as they are programmed to detonate when their temperature climbs to 50 degree Fahrenheit. The plot focuses on a terrorist who is determined to make off with a single canister of the powerful device--which, if set off, could literally melt down every inhabitant in a large city and then some--and to auction the crystals off to the country with the highest bid beginning at $100 million.
Dazzling stunts, nick-of-time heroics, and big stakes come with the territory of action-adventure movies. Any big-studio director can stage a few good vehicle crashes (though some, like John Frankenheimer for "Ronin," could set new standards for the cliche). Any qualified stunt person can scale rocks, turn acrobatic somersaults and leap through fire. What makes an action movie stand out are characters who make sense, villains with clever dialogue, and plots ("Breakdown" for example) that deviate from the routine. "Chill Factor" has the eye-popping stuntwork and some dazzling Utah scenery, but the dialogue is particularly clunky, the heroic team lacking in chemistry and credibility, and most of all the story is hitched to that same ol' paint-by-the-numbers race against the clock. Hugh Johnson, making his debut as a feature-film director, unashamedly throws in one of the hoariest of cliches, the villains who lose out because they talk too much while they have the potential heroes facing the barrels of their guns.
Let's assume that the powers who today hold onto some of the most devastating weapons of war are all reasonable people, at least smart enough to know that using their arsenal of major firepower would be suicidal. We still must confront the possibility that madmen could seize some of the nasty stuff from their keepers. In "Chill Factor," a half-crazed army major who is thrown into Ft. Leavenworth prison for ten years for an incident he did not trigger is determined to get revenge on his country by purloining a weapon so lethal that a simple canister could painfully end millions of lives. The story opens on the Pacific territory of Horn Island where the U.S. army is engaged in covert operations, testing an agent of chemical warfare designed to cremate people for miles. Though the test is supposed to cover a very limited area, an error by scientist Dr. Richard Long (David Paymer) unleashes all the fury of the device known as Elvis, destroying the entire island and killing eighteen servicemen. Major Andrew Brynner (Peter Firth) takes the rap and is sentenced to Ft. Leavenworth prison for ten years while Dr. Long, whom the major considers too valuable a person to incarcerate, is free to continue his research. When Brynner is released at the end of his sentence, he sets out with accomplices to steal the weapon and to sell it to the country that bids the most, but is repeatedly frustrated by the efforts of two average fellas, ice cream truck driver Arlo (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) and drifter/hamburger-flipper Tim Mason (Skeet Ulrich). As the crazed Brynner chases Arlo and Mason across a good deal of Montana (actually filmed in some of the country's most scenic areas in Utah), the two heroes in the ice cream truck bond as they face the usual obstacles: dumb redneck-issue sheriff and his silly accomplice; vicious dog; failing motor; dangerous cliffside roads; villains with bazooka and determination.
Cuba Gooding, Jr. gives a manic performance which presumably was thought to be comical but is actually an embarrassment. His character, Arlo, issues such manifestos while under the stress of the chase as, "I shoulda let that dog bite me...I coulda got rabies and I coulda went to the hospital and had a pretty nurse." As Tim Mason, Skeet Ulrich has that determined look of a man who is doing a wonderful service for his country as he plans to foil the villains using the home-spun philosophic advice taught to him while fishing with his mentor. Dr. Long, his fishing companion, warned him: "Power without caution is death--turn the power of the hunter against him," while scheming to catch the trout with some specially designed bait.
Like so many of its predecessors, "Chill Factor" features a race against time. A Fahrenheit thermometer is attached to the chemical bomb to warn its keepers to keep the canister chilled below 50 degrees. This bomb is so smart that it knows to detonate at exactly that temperature. When the dial says 49.9 degree (as you knew it would), the bomb behaves. How is this weapon so intelligent that it would inevitably discharge in just one more tenth of a degree? Fortunately for it and for the 3 million people in Seattle who owe their lives to two average guys, the weapon is smarter than those responsible for this derivative, uninspired film.
Rated PG-13. Running Time: 103 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews