Phoenix

When I first discovered this film on a DVD that came free with a newspaper, my initial thoughts were a little negative. It didn't look like it would be particularly good, although I was drawn by the name of William Sanderson who I had seen in Babylon 5 and thought was very good in that.

So after five months, I picked up the DVD and began watching with very low expectations of the film itself. I was met by a film with some excellent acting, quality writing, a gripping plot and frequent action. The only aspect of the film that disappointed me was the special effects, which looked more like they came from 1965 than 1995. Besides that an excellent film with excellent qualities and a truly appalling sequel that I prefer to pretend doesn't exist.

I've seen worse than this but not much. The Film is shot on the cheap and and it shows, you can clearly see the breeze blocks and the industrial warehouse style signs and scaffolding in shot all they have done is get some grey paint out. The movie itself has been edited poorly and is confusing to a degree where the start has been put in the middle and characters all of a sudden re-appear later in the story just to fill a plot whole. The acting too would be at home in a soft-core adult movie and the actors are forgettable. As for the pacing of the film it goes like this, Go to planet come back and go back to planet immediately again.

Complete rubbish.

There are some well known actors in this film Brad Dourif [DUNE], Billy Drago [Martial Law II], & William Sanderson [Bladerunner]. This film had some potential but failed miserably, the longer it went on the worse it got. Some of the SFX where ok, but still did nothing to make this film any better.