The greatest movie ever!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

I read everyone else's reviews & comments and I disagree with them all. First, this is not a ho-hum, boring movie. An earthquake cripples a Russian power plant threatening a meltdown, and it's a race against time to avert the disaster. Add into the mix a Russian supervisor who refuses to accept the idea of anything wrong, and will stop at nothing to keep the truth from getting out, even if it means locking the engineer near the core, and trying to run away when confronted with the truth. That is very believable. This movie is well-paced, and doesn't take long to get started. And once it gets going, you're on a roller-coaster ride of suspense. The scene in the elevator shaft reminds me of the suspense in TOWERING INFERNO and POSEIDON ADVENTURE. The kids are very believable American youngsters trying to deal with their parents' separation, and fate forces them to work together. Maybe it's all cliché, maybe not. But I like this movie. Maybe the special effects were taken from DANTE'S PEAK, I don't know. Frankly, I don't care, since they're very brief and quick. Only when scenes are obviously stolen from other movies do I care, like when they stole footage from AIRPORT 1975 to create SONIC IMPACT. But try it yourself. You may be surprised.

This is a rant, because I've just wasted time looking at another film and I'm sick of what I'm seeing:Divorced and or on the verge of divorce scientist couples squabbling (One of the reasons I loved Locusts the 8th Plague cause it depicted a harmonious (sp) couple by and large; wow it can be done!)? And I notice no one ever pulls the one who's the co-worker aside to implore him/her to focus on what they're hired to do and push the personal history mess in the back of their heads!Kids more likable and mature than the adults? I absolutely hated Miss Arrogant Female Scientist until the last half hour of this movie. The husband was a little more likable but after the way she addressed him in one scene; Oh My God, a self-respecting man would either, one, tell her to live with him being there or better yet call for a replacement for this job and get the first plane out of Russia. A someone in the installation pushing for a deadline, thus causing errors which bring about the film's major catastrophe? Kid--The couples kid--why can't this be a child they don't know?--hopelessly trapped calling for parent?And this channel has the nerve to dub these things "an original movie"?????Sci-Fi I beg the powers that be, hire someone, anyone, who can be more creative and dream up more exciting scenarios for these original films--Oh that can be anybody, just about anybody from the age of 10 up. Thank you.

I was surprised to note that the film was released in 2004; it has a very "1960's" European feel in look and soundtrack. None of the supposedly US characters looks or sounds American; the hairstyles and clothes, again, are very retro and much of the dialog appears to have been looped--without the appropriate background noise! None of this would matter if the conflicts or characters were involving--but the action is very formulaic and the acting poor.It certainly is difficult to come up with new approaches to disaster-type scenarios on limited budgets, but "China Syndrome" and countless earthquake films have already been done. As the Bible--and Spielberg in his Oscar acceptance speech--said: "In the beginning was the word..." With or without a significant budget, there first needs to be decent script, and this one just doesn't work. If the creators of Mystery Theater 3000 were still doing their magic, this film would be a perfect candidate for parody.

To repeat, Someone got a hold of many of the special effect earthquake sequences from the film "Dantes PeaK" and splotched them into this overly long, odd, hybrid Three Mile Island/ Chernobyle rip off disaster movie. Not only are the sequences of freeway collapses and car crashes from "Peak", but many of the disintegrating brick and plaster buildings shown cracking and crashing about sure look like buildings from the town of Dantes Peak used in the film "Peak". I thought is mighty odd, but using my DVD unit to view these scenes frame by frame, one reads English on the signs plunging into the street, not Russian as they should, because this film is supposed to be set in a Russian government town in Siberia! At the end of this film the credits don't clarify anything. The film is Canadian made, and some of the shots of the Russian town looked to be filmed say, in Romania or maybe Poland. Somewhere in the old Soviet Union at least due to the Stalinist buildings and foreign auto plates. This film might have rated higher, say a 5 or a 6, if it had not been at and least 30 minutes shorter. Much can be said for brevity with a hackneyed plot line like this. You see, a new nuclear plant is ready to go online in Russia's Siberia ...... 100% power up. Gee, there is a large earth tremor....An American scientist is in charge of bringing the plant up to capacity.The scientist is a woman, with her two teenage kids in a school for foreign English speaking teenagers in the Company town in Siberia run by the Russians with American know how and technology. The Companies scientific headquarters are back in the states. The man who built this particular reactor is called upon to investigate cost overruns and is sent to the Russian town Oh I didn't tell you that the female American scientist and the guy who designed the reactor were separated and close to divorce? Gee there is another earth tremor..... Once disaster strikes this American family in Russia bad things start to happen. The mom and dad are both nuclear engineers or programmers or physicists, or some such. The high school kids are classic, The boy, a school cut up around 17, wants a motor bike and the girl, 15 and a goth, just wants away from her mom and her American School. GEE there is a BIG earthquake and the reactor looks like it is going into the China Syndrome and it's a race to unite the family and stop a nuclear disaster unparalleled in history. YAWN, YAWN AGAIN. It takes soooooo long for this to happen, you don't care about anything except, is this thing ever going to end? Pretty boring and what's with the jacked scenes from Dantes Peak?Not recommended