Charming and brutal

Amateur movie with Big budget

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The only other comment I read about this "mini-series" was woefully incorrect. The poster stated that this was made during the writers strike with "scab labor". That is very wrong. This was made a year after the writers strike, late winter 2009 and used mostly union actors. I think for the budget they were working with they did a creative job. Every production isn't going to be 'Gone with the wind', a cable mini-series is just what you got here. No more, no less. It is easy to bash productions but give them a break here. I was very surprised at the names that were in this. There were some obvious stretches of the imagination here, but if you suspend your disbelief you can get through this just fine and be mildly entertained in the process.

Even though there are a lot of movies or miniseries out there created on a low-budget, they often can surprise you by having a good script, acting or an original story line. Specially in the sci-fi genre, where you can get more extreme in the fantasy part, I tend to give a movie more slack.This mini-series however annoyed me after the first 10 minutes. The idea starts out OK, a secret military project has created a device to manipulate the weather. Early in the start of the series it gets activated and it will be obvious to you that you can find better special effects on you-tube made by 10-year old. OK, bad effects, I can live with that.Then it all gets worse, a lot of characters get introduced which totally do not contribute to the story in any way. They needed a setting to show us how this bad weather effects the general public, so they introduce not 1 or 2 but 3 complete side-stories which could have been taking from any bad drama series on TV. In addition, the editing was so terrible that they pasted the scenes of the boredom after each other, letting you watch up to 20 minutes to irrelevant stories. The worse of these being a woman of course who is pregnant and gets trapped in a nasty place..guess what happens.The second part that annoyed me is that this movie did not get any (or very bad) review before actually shooting it. Any film student could have filtered out the cliché parts, bad sequencing and put a more scientific realistic view to this concept. They most likely would have done it for free.But then the worst part. The actors that accepted a role for this piece of crap. They often do not realize the damage they cause to their own career, instead it's only the money they are interested in.Luke Perry: Maybe not my biggest fan as 90210 certainly is not my genre but still, I've seen him take on some pretty good roles for example The 5th Element and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He has set a certain standard in the movie industry for himself. A standard we come to expect when advertising a movie featuring him. I'm pretty sure he didn't even read the script, such fail.James van Der Beek: Maybe the only one that took his seriously. The character he portraits has potential, maybe not completely original but non the less, it could have made a fine character for any SF series. I feel his disappointment in ever excepting this role.David James Elliott and his JAG buddy Patrick Labyorteaux: I guess their JAG money ran out. Again actors, stop taking roles blindly just for the money, you can do better than this.All together: bad directing, mediocre acting, very bad script, worst editing and terrible effects. All on a very promising idea.

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.

John Larroquette was prominently featured in the commercials, and was in the movie less than 5 minutes total in all his scenes. Most of the main characters in this poor natural disaster movie get shot by hit men. This is more of a shaggy dog movie then a murder mystery...oh wait, this was supposed to be a different movie...but I forget...just like the plot. You follow 1 guy, Dr. Kirk, in the movie as he runs in the rain from assassins, police, and an investigator. The FBI is quick to take him from the police as soon as he reveals to them the reason everyone he has met in the last few hours are dead and he is blamed for. Only to be returned to the military funded and ran weather control system to right everything. Then those feds are killed and Dr. Kirk (Luke Perry) while in transit and is kidnapped by the military and taken hooded to an abandoned factory, and introduced to a new character (played by James Van Der Beek) 15 minutes from the end of the first half of the movie(can we say Red Herring), who says that those who he worked for want him dead and not back to fix the problem the military created. This was made clear 10 minutes in to the show. Therefore, all that is in between is fluff. All the special effects, the constant senseless murders, and weather updates only help to drag out a weak plot. 5 minutes from the end of the movie, James Van Der Beek's character reveals he was the guy who first started the program that Luke Perry was head of. Telling him the more you mess with the weather, the worst it gets. Cut to chaos on the screen, more rain, lightning and a pregnant woman in a hospital finally giving birth. More "techno-babble" from Luke Perry's replacement at the military funded weather control system. Hr states that the fixed the problem, only to realize it is actually worst. Plans start getting hit with wind shear and crash. It seems this movie was filmed one way, and then went another way with film clips of the old intended movie spliced in. The first half (2 hour movie of the week) was what appears to be a Hodge podge of scenes and scenes where characters were killed off almost as soon as introduced. The second half has me deciding to skip it.Bad first half of a 2 part movie of the week. Sci-Fi channel could have done better, and that's not saying much.