Alerte solaire

SOLAR ATTACK is an extremely dull would-be disaster movie starring everyone's favourite low-rent action hero, Mark Dacascos. In it, solar flares threaten Earth and the usual team of scientists and government types have to team up to discover a way to combat the impending doom.

Unfortunately this is dry and stilted beyond belief, with no attempts made at realism. They don't try to engage the viewer's attention once. The actual disaster elements are limited to a couple of scenes of burning fireballs striking a handful of American cities but such moments, despite being entertaining, are few and far between leading to lots of inactivity and dull dialogue.

Cast-wise, Dacascos is the dashing hero but unforgivably doesn't even get the opportunity to kick any martial arts ass - he has one fight scene which is over in approximately two seconds! Elsewhere we get a tired-looking Louis Gossett Jr. playing the US President, and lots of to-ing and fro-ing on board a Russian sub during the supposedly thrilling climax, which is about as thrilling as me cutting my toenails. I think they were going for a HUNT FOR RED October style vibe but it falls flat, like the rest of this terrible movie.

Although I had to suspend disbelief a lot in this, it was worth it because the underlying story has heart and excitement. The production values are low and the scientific merit is questionable at best; but the screenplay is impressively ambitious in scope. And although the budget was extremely limited, some of submarine, fighter plane, and nuclear CGI effects came off quite well.

This definitely kept me entertained and I think it's quite underrated. Fans of sci-fi disaster films like Armageddon will enjoy this if they can see past the extreme lack of polish, into the endearing earnestness and ambition that lies beneath.

Solar Attack is about a large coronal mass ejection (CME) from the sun that threatens to ignite the atmosphere and kill everyone. The president must try and make the right decision and he only has one chance. The scientists and advisors are split, but the president errs on the side of caution and authorizes some dangerous operations. While this film deals with a lesser known extinction level event, the science is still dubious as presented. For the most part, the performances aren't convincing and seems rushed. I think this has more to do with the directing rather than the acting. Dialog is common with little snap. I doubt that even big name actors could have pulled this out of the C+ range. Special effects were nonspecific, general, and unrealistic.

If I could have given this a half star I would have. We watch SyFy movies for laughs. We enjoy the bad acting, the awful special effects, the ridiculous-ness of it all. While this definitely had the bad acting (aside from Louis Gossett, Jr. he was fine for the couple of minutes he was in it...but why, Louis, why?) it had none of the fun. There was a lot of conversation, a lot of 'science', but no gratuitous violence that we've come to love from the SyFy movies, none of the laughs, just a bunch of serious talking about the why's of it all. I don't care, I just want to watch someones arm come off or some silly line I can quote afterwards. Skip it. Watch Megasnake or Frankenfish for some good quality cheese. This is boring monotony. The only fun we had was when they mentioned how big something was and we compared whatever it was to the size of Joanne Kelly's distractingly large upper lip. We fast forwarded the last 20 minutes to see the predictable ending and regretted wasting a Friday night on this one.

I read another review saying this was only for people who were idiots. However, the movie was quite interesting and not too bad for a TV movie. It reminded me of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, only a modern version.

I was glad to see no horrible camera work where everything is jerking around and very amateurish looking. I would definitely watch this again.

The acting was quite satisfactory and I know that TV movies do not have the same budget as movies released to the theaters, this was definitely captivating.

The premise IS possible (as possible as the Van Allen radiation belt catching fire in Voyage). The effects were just fine. I found this movie to be entertaining and that's really what I watch a movie for.