Cyclone, catégorie 6 : Le Choc des tempêtes

Fist of all don't listen to the negative critics here this movie was made for TV and was the highest rated Mini-Series in 2 years for CBS (because it was good)Part 1 had 19.4 million viewers, Part 2 17 million. If you've seen some of these wackadoo Sci-Fi Channel movies this is not one of them. Area51 FX used a combination of actual stock footage blended with cgi and LightWave3D Modeling to create the FX with a budget close to $15 million. Keep in mind of just over a thousand reviews on IMDb 12.5% give this movie a 10 over on Amazon of 34 reviews it scores a 3.5 out of five. Not to shabby some people just like to pick fun movies apart as if this was meant to be Shakespearean its not its meant to be what it is a DISASTER MOVIE. Some movies with larger budgets have their flows to like 2012 which had a monster budget and awesome FX had a single family plot line while all heck breaks loose around the world same for DAY AFTER TOMORROW. This excellent TV-movie gives us several characters, some better than others and while I liked the other movies mentioned so much so that I bought them on Blu-Ray I just ordered the sequel CATEGORY 7 on Blu-Ray after watching this one on Sci-Fi channel over the weekend. Great fun, Very Good Special FX, some funny and interesting characters, likable acting and actors for me these days with some lame movies on TV this was a cut above 8 out of 10 stars for keeping me seated the full 3 hours.

Okay, so I enjoy a romp through destruction now and then - I'll admit it, I'm a disaster movie fan. That is, when the movie is ABOUT a disaster, NOT when the movie itself IS a disaster - BIG DIFFERENCE! My husband and I almost turned this off after the first hour of the first night, but decided to stick it out to see some potentially cool special effects. Okay, we got those. And then we felt compelled to watch the conclusion on Wednesday. Sloooooooooow. Boooooooooring. Not to mention stupid! I was pretty willing to overlook the paper-thin characters, lame dialogue, and clichéd, disjointed plotting. I was even mildly willing to overlook the damage done to the anti-global-warming cause. But in a movie where obviously somebody had enough computer smarts to give a realistic facsimile of the St. Louis Arch twisting and shouting, why wasn't there an equally savvy computer geek on hand to EDIT OUT THE PALM TREES from the stock footage dubbed in as "hurricane hits Chicago?" HELLO ALL YOU ON THE WEST COAST - last time I checked, Chicago was still located in the Midwest (you know, that "fly-over" country that produces most of YOUR food???), and guess what? There are no palm trees in the Midwest. SURPRISE!

I'll admit that having heard all these negative things about this 2 part movie, that it wasn't all that bad. It certainly wasn't as bad as I had expected but it also really wasn't too much good either.

The movie is filled with many stupid silly plot-lines. They are so all formulaic that none of them offers any surprises. On top of that, the dialog in the movie is absolutely horrible. At times it even manages to become laughable. This is the sort of typical dramatic disaster movie that features many characters in it, of which none really ever work out as an interesting or engaging one.

This movie isn't about natural disasters, this is about people and their personal problems. Now is that anything new or interesting? I mean, I've I wanted to follow a story like this I would watch a soap opera in stead. It's the sort of mistake "Deep Impact" and disaster movies in general often make. The movie at times tries to put in morale in about the environment and global warming and such but all those things come across as forced and look silly because of that in the movie.

It seems to take for ever before the introduction and build-up in the story stops. There is a lot of talking about natural disasters but not enough of it gets actually shown on the screen. The movie is too long on its drama.

The use of news archive material of bad weather conditions and tornadoes is too obvious. It makes the movie seem even more cheap and silly.

There are some good actors in the movie but even they can't make the movie work out fully- or the dialog. Randy Quaid, Dianne Wiest and Brian Dennehy are no small time actors. Guess they also regret being in this, looking back at it.

But the movie does a good job at keeping the pace high, even though when nothing is happening. For a made for TV production this really wasn't all that bad. I mean, I have seen far worse attempts. The movie was overall good looking, despite of the weak and cheap special effects. But I don't really see what's the big deal about it, since the special effects get never featured that prominently in the movie. I therefor also feel that some of the negativity toward this movie is for most part unjustified. Not that it deserves raving criticism but its a decent attempt that does not bore but just becomes too silly and unlikely in parts.

5/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

CATEGORY 6 can readily be summed up by pointing out that it was shot in Canada, although it is set in Chicago. An aging Brian Dennehy leads a huge cast in this badly made disaster flick as huge storms head for Chicago and a hacker brings Chi-town to its knees, power-wise. Dennehy is OK even though he is clearly just collecting a paycheck. Thomas Gibson of "Criminal Minds" mumbles his way through as the TV movie's secondary lead. And Randy Quaid plays a colorful tornado chaser who is a near-duplicate of his character in "Independence Day." The film is talky and tedious, and the effects are on a high school level. There's even stock footage that doesn't match particularly well with the locale (palm trees, anyone?) I managed to sit through most of this before finally giving up.

They covered everything... Badly. From special effects to facts. I kept watching because it was so bad. There's something to be said for bad, but not enough to make me want to watch part 2. I probably will though, just to see if it is as bad. Everybody was over the top. Actors that I usually like count on for good performances were terrible in this. Had any of the writers ever actually observe a real relationship between real people? I had a little trouble understanding how people in a city that was totally blacked out were able to watch news updates. Big business is bad. Government is good. The only people you can count on for honesty is the media. Throw everything you can think of at a camera and you've got yourself a movie. I think that must have been the philosophy behind this one.