Der Chill Faktor

There's only one reason to watch "Chill Factor", and that's Peter Firth (Colonel Andrew Brynner) and his bunch of totally useless elite commandos / terrorists.

The plot is awful, the dialogue is terrible, and it makes you wince to think that Cuba Gooding Jnr once won an Oscar. However, this movie contains some of the most useless bad guys you've ever seen .

Laugh out loud as one chap abseils into the path of a moving van, whilst another rides his motorbike into the grill of an oncoming truck. Grab your sides as Peter Firth delivers line after line of hilarious empty threats, movie clichés, and, in some cases, complete and utter rubbish.

The movie lacks pace (apart from a nicely done initial disaster) and has no idea which genre it belongs to. Is it a bad action movie, a send up, or a comedy buddy movie? Who knows? What I do know is that Peter Firth realised he was making an absolute stinker of a movie and took the opportunity to ham-it-up to the max. He's a serious contender for worst movie bad guy ever, who clearly recruits his goons from the school for the seriously challenged.

Watch out for his numerous attempts to steal best movie leer from John Voight in Anaconda!

This one sucked. I mean, I can see the appeal of a plain-jane action movie, but this one has been coughed up from the phlegmatic lungs of hundreds of other action movies. Every single damned line in the whole thing was a big cliche. For God's sake, Cuba Gooding, Jr. at one point says, "When this is over, remind me to kick your ass." Raise your hands if you've heard that one before. Skeet Ulrich, I liked. Cuba Gooding, Jr., I didn't. The only line he delivers that I liked was the same one that everyone has heard a hundred times in the advertisements, so, I was ready for it. AVOID.

A scientist (David Paymer) develops a biological lethal weapon and accidentally kills eighteen soldiers in an island during the tests. Colonel Andrew Brynner (Peter Firth) is the commander and becomes the scapegoat of the incident. He is sentenced to go to the prison for ten years. Along this period, he becomes unbalanced and decides to get the bomb to sell to terrorists. He commands a group of mercenaries to steal the bomb from the base where Dr. Richard Long is researching. He shots the scientist but he flees with the weapon to the convenience store where the clerk Tim Mason (Skeet Ulrich) and an ice-cream trucker driver Arlo(Cuba Gooding Jr.) are negotiating. Mason receive this weapon from the injured Dr. Richard Long, with an advice to keep it below 50 F. they try to reach a military fort and try to escape from the colonel's team that is hunting them down.

"Chill Factor" is not a bad film; indeed it is slightly above average for this type of action movie. There are some terrible cuts of the scenes in the edition and the egocentric Arlo is annoying most of the time. The deceptive conclusion makes this film forgettable. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Suando Frio" ("Sweating Cold")

Note: On 02 October 2015, I saw this film again.

I originally saw on HBO a few years ago now it's on Starz which I have for a couple months. Quite a thrilling kind of disturbing yet funny in some parts especially when Skeet and Cuba are together. Love the line "I am destroyer of worlds"! Odd the few times I watched this I barely got sleep one of those easy to chill in bed types pun intended; great how well written it is. Peter Firth is one of the best villain actors in my opinion!

Chill Factor left me a little cold. The contrivances of this film were at such a level that I was unable to suspend my disbelief. Unfortunate, because it boasts good acting talent. I got the feeling they had to shoot the film in a week, forcing the production team to take a machete to their basic "FORMULA" for a commercial action /thriller. Further compounding a fracture, they wasted the adroit talent of Hudson Leick. The film would have been more interesting had they expanded her role. It will be interesting to see how long it lasts at the box office.