20131124: SciFi Review--Arctic Blast

Arctic Blast

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Australian/Canadian live action feature length film, 2010, NR, 91 minutes, SciFi, thriller.
2. IMDB: 3.7/10.0 from 2,204 audience ratings. Estimated budget, 5 million AUD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' 30% liked it from 442 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.3/5.0 from 361,882 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Brian Trenchard-Smith.
6. Starring: Michael Shanks as Jack Tate, Alexandra Davies as Emma Tate, Saskia Hampele as Zoe, Bruce Davison as Winslaw, Indiana Evans as Naomi Tate, Alan Andrews as Harold Stuart.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Front story: after an eclipse of the sun, there is a major singularity in the Earth's atmosphere, and the drop in temperature starts.  All the rest of the film as about: figuring out causation, predicting effects, and constructing a way to stop, then reverse, the effects.


2. Back story: Jack and his wife Emma are getting a divorce because he spends too much time at work.  Of course, Emma also spends too much time at work, but Jack gets blamed for it, since Emma got to her lawyers first.


3. We have some of the usual themes.  A few people know disaster will strike, but the people they contact will not believe them.  This happens to Jack as he tries to warn of additional problems after his company's research ship has all on board frozen to death.  After a while we get the 'boy who cried wolf' problem; no one will believe Jack no matter what he says.  Those in power are somewhat willing to believe the predictions after plenty of damage and death has already occurred.  An extra threat comes into play: the child of one of the leads (in this case Emma, Jack's ex) is in jeopardy for a substantial part of the film.


4. The last usual theme is: the survivors put in a perhaps successful effort to stop the threat.


5. This fails at first because Jack is 'out of the loop,' and the solution proposed by Winslaw, who is in the loop, is destined only to make things worse.


6. After the massive fail, will anyone get behind Jack?  If so, will they be in time?


3. Conclusions
1. The film is a bit too preachy for me.
2. One line summary: The ice fog that froze Tasmania spreads around the globe.
3. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Fine.


2. Sound: 10/10 No problems.


3. Acting: 7/10 Not as bad as many of these formulaic disasters.  I liked Michael Shanks.  The lesser known actors were were not as bad as I expected.


4. Screenplay: 5/10 There is nothing new here.  I've seen this film at least 30 times before.  The themes mentioned above are used just about every time.  The only variable is the current threat: meteors, sharks, piranhas, insects, whatever.  Fortunately, the movie was easy on the eye, pleasant to the ear, and the SFX were not all deadly bad, as is often the case.