Good start, but then it gets ruined

Good concept, poorly executed.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Where to start ?Let's just say that the actors in this movie are well aware that their performance here is not going to land them even a janitor position in the same frame as an A-list actor. The actors are either bland, or prone to confuse hysteria with passion. Then again, the script gives nothing to be passionate about, so maybe hysteria was the best bet.Memorable quote : "She's going to call the telephone company and put a trace on this call. You don't want that to happen !" says the hero to his jailer. What ? His girlfriend can call the telephone company and have the call traced ? Sorry, I must have missed the part where it was mentioned that she was FBI, Secret Service or had even the most tenuous connection to some person of authority who could actually have that put in place for her. Whatever the love interest's job is, it has nothing near the clout needed to pull that off.Then we have the entire premise of the film : that a weatherman has modeled climate on his laptop to be able to predict extreme weather conditions. No offense to weathermen, I happen to know that their job actually requires level of mathematics way beyond my own, but this guy is no weatherman, he's just the TV announcer. The day we have a genius TV announcer who happens to hold a PhD in thermodynamics and is content with smiling on camera while pointing to fluffy white clouds on a blue screen, call me and I will revise my opinion of this film.If you're stone drunk or high as a kite, this might be viewed as passable entertainment. Otherwise, stay clear.

It's movies like Jet Stream that make you wonder how Syfy manages to spend hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars on each of their movies, and still get phenomenally bad results.Jet Stream suffers from very bad writing, leading to cringe-worthy dialog in a lot of the film. For some reason there's quite a lot of painfully bad jokes too, and it seems they couldn't have been times worse. Add on to that the wooden acting by an extensive part of the cast.The CGI is just not convincing at all, everything looks very poorly and amateurishly done. The sequences that are meant to thrill the audience just look ridiculous, laughably bad at times. I also counted a couple of completely unnecessary close-ups.This is one of the many movies in which Syfy tried to disguise Eastern Europe like the USA, and here they did pretty much the worst job of all their movies I've seen so far. Not to mention that there are countless shots in this, which Syfy has recycled and used for multiple movies. Really, the only positive thing there is to say is that this movie may make you laugh at how bad it is.

There are worse SyFy original movies than Jet Stream, though that is very little consolation as from this viewer's perspective it wasn't a good movie at all. It's not entirely without redeeming qualities, the best aspect is the scenery which is really quite lovely and eye-catching. And actually the music also has its moments, not a great score with not much that is unique about it but less generic and sluggish-in-tempo than other SyFy movies of its type and any other genre. They're all that Jet Stream has going for it. Regardless of whether it shows an inaccurate representation of the military, from memory the military have been represented far worse than here(from a movie seen in the past three months or so Sea Viper comes to mind), or not, that was among the least of Jet Stream's problems if so. Jet Stream is badly hindered by budget, the movie just looks drab with editing that suggests either somebody with little experience or one with little interest for the movie and special effects that are at best slapdash and rushed through. The script is riddled with tired clichés, the cheese factor and parts that will leave people confused as to whether it makes sense or not. Another one of those movies that could have done with a proper read-through. The characters are cardboard stereotypes with personalities that are not interesting or engaging in the slightest, while there is a sense that the actors were not connecting with their characters or material at all. Few of them seemed to be even aware of the situation their characters were in and there is a lot of phoning-in and embarrassed-looking body language going on. But the aspect that came off worst of all was the story. Some may find spotting the many scientific errors fun to spot, others will be too infuriated to be entertained. Either way, with errors this many and so confused in nature it gets increasingly difficult to take things seriously. There are some decent enough ideas on display, the problem is- and sorry to anybody who considers this a tired criticism- Jet Stream either under-develops these ideas or doesn't do anything with them. Not just that but it tries to incorporate several plot elements and neither come off successfully. The disaster elements lack excitement and is too ridiculous to properly swallow with the cheapest of the production values. The conspiracy thriller elements feature Jet Stream's most stock characters and most unfocused dialogue and just don't thrill or engage, instead any scenes involving this are dull. The satire lacks bite, sharpness or acerbic wit and while the media can exaggerate or twist things at times the satire here can border on heavy-handed and preachy and almost too much of an attack. And the romantic elements descends into mawkishness and overwrought melodrama, and has the movie's most toe-curlingly clichéd dialogue. In conclusion, there is worse out there than Jet Stream but there are no thrills or sense of fun, and the cheap production values, bad dialogue and acting and a story that does very little with any potential it had sees to that. The scenery and to a lesser extent the music are the best things about it, everything else is a failure, by all means if you like it go ahead but if anyone does dislike it it is very easy to see why. 3/10 Bethany Cox

I've not seen this film and I might not. Yet, this is no less a review. I'm responding to a patient falsehood, or urban myth, concerning Hollywood's some time lack of actual presentation of the military in film. Not too surprisingly there isn't any U.S. law preventing a movie production involved in the portrayal of armed forces personnel to use correct military uniforms, along with proper grooming. In fact, presenting any military force in its proper array, in film, is advisable. It was plainly determined by the US Supreme Court in the case SCHACHT v. UNITED STATES, 398 U.S. 58 (1970).So if the production company and director fail to present proper military uniforms, with correct placement of unit patches, rank tabs, and ribbons and other such accessories, and grooming is deplorable, then, in my opinion, the script/acting isn't much better anyway. Yes, this is a blind and very arbitrary judgment of a film I've not seen. But, I'm also operating from experience, as both a military veteran and a avid movie goer.