PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com
A silly little action flick, The Chill Factor preaches that `Keeping Cool is a Matter of Life and Death.' But they don't mean `cool' like the Fonz - they mean literally cool, like Hillary Clinton. In the worst and most unintentionally hysterical rip-off of Speed yet, the film's two stars race across Montana to get a deadly biological weapon to an Army base before – get this – the temperature of the chemical hits fifty degrees.
The weapon, called Elvis, was created over ten years ago by an Army scientist, played by David Paymer (Payback). I think his name is actually Dr. Richard Long (or directory style - Long, Dick), but I'm not sure. While isolated on a tiny desert island, Long tested a very small amount of Elvis before his computer was done compiling data on the deadly agent. Originally intended to affect a 200-yard radius around the test site, Elvis instead engulfs the entire five-mile island, killing all eighteen men that were not located within the safety of the control building.
Long escaped with a slap on the wrist, but his Colonel (played by Peter Firth, Mighty Joe Young) is tossed in Leavenworth for ten years. Of course when he gets out of the clink, he wants to kill Long, steal Elvis and sell it to foreign countries for - insert Dr. Evil voice here - 100 million dollars. So Firth heads to Long's current research facility in Jerome, Montana with a group of ninja-types. Long story short, the doctor lives long enough to get Elvis out of there, and Elvis ends up with Long's fishing buddy Mason (played by Skeet Ulrich, The Newton Boys), who works the late shift at Darlene's Diner.
Learning about Elvis' temperature restrictions, Mason commandeers an ice cream delivery truck and, together with its driver (played by Cuba Gooding Jr., Instinct), the two spend the remaining hour and a half running from the Colonel and his garrison of black-clad foot soldiers. Ulrich has the charisma of an orange and Gooding is like Martin Lawrence turned up to eleven. Shouldn't Oscar winners be held to higher standards than the slop he's been pushing? The only way this could have been worse is if Jared Leto and Master P were cast in the leading roles.
Among the film's highlights are Ulrich and Gooding, Jr. using a rowboat to sled down the face of a mountain, which at first sight is a straight drop-off, but when they're actually hurtling down the hill it has somehow transformed into a less dangerous forty-five-degree angle. And there is the obligatory fight on the roof of the ice cream truck as it races in and out of tunnels bored into the mountain, which relegates the bad guy to a Wile-E.-Coyote-type fate. Are people still entertained by this? Thanks to the weapon being nicknamed Elvis, there are also quite a few witty lines like `Elvis has entered the building' and snappy comebacks to questions like `Where's Elvis?': `Dead, last time I checked.'
Not to be confused with the 1990 Gary Crosby pic of the same name, or the short-lived 1972 Robert Culp/Eli Wallach televison series, Factor is the directorial debut of Hugh Johnson (insert additional penis joke here), who was previously the cinematographer on G.I. Jane. The film was scripted by Drew Gitlin and Mike Cheda, the former in his debut and the latter the screenwriter for something called The Shape of Things to Come, a sci-fi thriller that only played in Canadian theaters when released in 1979. Plus, his name is almost a type of cheese, so that should tell you something, too. (1:42 - R for violence and language)
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