Sole Survivor

This is an amazing story of a man who lost everything that was really important to him as an airplane crashed killing his wife and child. He copes with the depression, but soon learns that life does not end after death, and who better to teach him but the last person to ever see his family alive, a six year old escaped test-subject, named 21-21 who survived.....but how....the answer is something this man has to cope with ever more. I think this is one of the most touching things I've seen in a long time, and believe me, there are so many twists to it, what I've said doesn't even start to explain it, in fact, I don't even think you could.

A man loses his daughter and wife in a plane crash. He has to cope with the loss, and in the process of finding out why the plane went down he meets a woman who someone wants to kill and subsequently starts being hunted by a few CIA agents. The agents were involved in cloning people with special gifts. There favorite was a boy who could get into the mind of people and influence them to kill people the CIA wanted dead (assassinated). Gloria Reuben's (ER) character is one of the scientists who was cloning people, and cloned this girl with special gifts like healing. The CIA thought the girl was a threat to their project and wanted her dead. They had their boy cause the plane crash in which the man lost his daughter and wife. Gloria Reuben's character and the girl with the special powers survived the plane crash because the girl transported both of them into another dimension. I started watching the series, without realizing what I was really watching. The suspense grabbed me although I make a point of watching nothing that brings fear into my head. This two-part mini series did not bring fear, but was a suspenseful sci-fi type of story that really caught my attention and I enjoyed watching it. Favorite Scenes: The girl healing people. Awesome! Favorite Quote": Thank you for the cookies and for the gun." I recommend the series!

A made for TV miniseries - thank god it aired in one piece in my country- based on a typical Dean Koontz story. A typical Dean Koontz story consists most of the times of the following trademark ingredients:

1.an evil villain that has access to all the nifty computer and info stuff, mostly a loner and a sociopath. 2. a secret organization that can only partly control the fore-mentioned bad guy but delivers him ( mostly its a him) resources. 3. a loner that is halfway out of the system is also very witty on the same grounds the bad guy is 4. someone in distress. 5. a little dash of the supernatural or some ET activity.

Stir this up and serve chilled. In other words in my opinion most of the Koontz books are exactly the same with a few exceptions. A done by the numbers story that after reading more books becomes predictable and boring.

Most of the Koontz movies I saw - not that many- suffer of course all the more from the above and so does this movie. Billy Zane is not a very gifted actor and he stumbles through the plot with mild commitment and I never felt the grief portrayed enough that a man who has lost his wife and child must feel. The muddled plot that is predictable for everyone who has read at least one fiction book in his life goes and goes and the viewer might take the opportunity to nod off so once in a while...

But

There is Mr McGinley, I liked him in on deadly ground and an ever further over the top character is brought to the screen here. He has all the great lines and he breathes more life in the material he has been given than one could expect. Lucky for the viewer he has a nice portion of screen time and it might be hard not to cheer for the bad guy in this case. He portraits a better bad guy than Mr Koontz can create in his books. He is by far the best actor in this series and from the looks of it the only one who is enjoying himself.

The 7 I gave is for his performance.

Well, I enjoyed it. Somewhat a bit too long, but Billy Zane gives a well acted performance. The bad guy played by McGinley is very corny and goofy, quite unbelievable in his actions, yet somehow it fits the storyline. I caught this movie on a rainy afternoon and found its four hours most entertaining and suspenseful. Some of the plot is very far fetched. Examples are: The little girl brings a bird back to life and in the fashion of a Jesus Christ makes serious bloody wounds and cuts heal, but this is a great child actress. I like Billy Zane and always thought he was a fine actor. I recommend this movie. Not the best, but compelling, riveting and suspenseful. One other comment I have is that I could not stomach the cruelty of the blinding and shooting of the horse by the McGinley character. To me this was absolutely not necessary and totally repellent.

My one-line summary for this movie, and most of this critique, seems to hold for most Dean Koontz books/movies that I have read/seen. They are a combination of Stephen King fantasy, horror and mystery; "supported", sort of, by a Michael Crichton "high tech". The combination works well up to a point, but for reasons that I don't quite understand, it doesn't quite become "great". It seems that Koontz isn't quite comfortable with a good fantasy story, that he seems to "need" some kind of scientific justification, which he doesn't.

This particular movie/story rolls along quite nicely, a lot of interest, possibly a little too long before the denouement, when we find out what's really going on. But overall, a "very good" movie. I see strong similarities between this movie and "Phantoms" in particular.

I also think that the violence is a little gratuitous. But against that is that there is not a single swear word, not a single glimpse of naked flesh; where there is plenty of opportunity to include that if he wanted to.

Having said all that, it IS a good movie. I would always be prepared to hire out a Dean Koontz movie on the strength of his name alone. It's simply that here on IMDB I get to wax philosophical about it...