There's supposed to be world wide extreme weather, and, if you wait long enough, the movie occasionally addresses that. Usually, however, it's a poor man's version of Oliver Stone's conspiracy tales. Also, the director tries to bedazzle you with a smoke and mirror approach, deluging the screen with cutesy-cutesy gimmickry.
There's a rogue in the government who's heading an agency that's covertly conducting experiments to harness and control the weather. He's (naturally) a hawkish fanatic, who wants to use nature's power to blast everybody to smithereens. He has a bunch of puppets: a dumb 4-star general, some dumb scientists, an endless supply of dumb assassins, and a dumb script. Things get out of hand; (what else is new?) and this guy (when he doesn't play golf or romance a girl in his sinisterly dark office) ignores warnings that the experimentation is dangerous. You don't mess with Mother Nature, you know. But he doesn't care.
The constant use of gimmickry, in place of solid directing, is harder to overlook than the goofy plot line. Whenever somebody's having a phone conversation, (and I mean every single time) this director cranks out split-screens: sometimes, two, sometimes three, sometimes four scenes at once. Often, one or more of the windows shows something that has nothing to do with anything. Then, there's the falsely accused guy chase. Every time he's running, they flash over-exposed shots into the sun, even though this is supposed to be taking place in the middle of the biggest rain storm of the century. If this is supposed to be the innocent guy's view, then he needs new glasses.
The second-in-line scientist guy, who has no clue what he's doing, says the same line over and over (namely, that he has no idea what he's doing) when talking to the conspiracy leader. There are several disconnected stories, all with people continuously yelling at each other. A couple reconciling, an EMT with a pregnant wife, a female cop who has dumb superiors, and conspirators offing more victims than the lethal weather does.
With all its problems, it's still somehow watchable, if only to laugh at. The actors try their best with the mess they're given, and the whole thing is a mindless diversion. It's certainly a better watch than some of the other summer replacement programming out there.
There's a rogue in the government who's heading an agency that's covertly conducting experiments to harness and control the weather. He's (naturally) a hawkish fanatic, who wants to use nature's power to blast everybody to smithereens. He has a bunch of puppets: a dumb 4-star general, some dumb scientists, an endless supply of dumb assassins, and a dumb script. Things get out of hand; (what else is new?) and this guy (when he doesn't play golf or romance a girl in his sinisterly dark office) ignores warnings that the experimentation is dangerous. You don't mess with Mother Nature, you know. But he doesn't care.
The constant use of gimmickry, in place of solid directing, is harder to overlook than the goofy plot line. Whenever somebody's having a phone conversation, (and I mean every single time) this director cranks out split-screens: sometimes, two, sometimes three, sometimes four scenes at once. Often, one or more of the windows shows something that has nothing to do with anything. Then, there's the falsely accused guy chase. Every time he's running, they flash over-exposed shots into the sun, even though this is supposed to be taking place in the middle of the biggest rain storm of the century. If this is supposed to be the innocent guy's view, then he needs new glasses.
The second-in-line scientist guy, who has no clue what he's doing, says the same line over and over (namely, that he has no idea what he's doing) when talking to the conspiracy leader. There are several disconnected stories, all with people continuously yelling at each other. A couple reconciling, an EMT with a pregnant wife, a female cop who has dumb superiors, and conspirators offing more victims than the lethal weather does.
With all its problems, it's still somehow watchable, if only to laugh at. The actors try their best with the mess they're given, and the whole thing is a mindless diversion. It's certainly a better watch than some of the other summer replacement programming out there.