Ciel de feu

From the opening sequence I thought I had MELTDOWN nailed as a cross genre film which mixes DEEP IMPACT with a cop thriller . This seemed a strange idea , but that's not how the plot unravels . Apparently the near miss with the asteroid causes the Earth to spin off its axis which leads to the world's temperature rising , rising and rising . So we've got a plot featuring something similar to the novels of Wyndham and John Christopher where a group of people have to find sanctuary or else they'll join most of the world's population in dying a slow terrible death

I can't say MELTDOWN is a great apocalypse movie but since it's a direct to video/DVD film therefore lacking a big budget it's a relatively good meaningless time waster . My only real problem is a line of dialogue spouted by the scientist character in the sewer which happens half way the running time which will you leave you gasping " oh dear I think they've given away the ending ! "

"Meltdown" is a disaster (tele)movie about really hot weather starring Casper Van Dien. That one sentence is probably enough to make most people run for cover but as a disaster movie devotee and long suffering fan of Mr Van Dien, I found "Meltdown" pretty irresistible.

You could drive a semi-trailer through the holes in the film's plot. In short, scientists fire a nuclear weapon into a meteor with the intention of developing a meteor defence program. However, instead of fragmenting, a large chunk of the rock heads towards earth only to be deflected. Unfortunately, the near miss manages to push the earth out of orbit, dragging it towards the sun and resulting in really hot weather.

Casper plays Tom, a police officer, who attempts to save his family and new girlfriend from the heatwave and protect them from the looters who have taken over the city. This synopsis actually makes the film sound more interesting than it is. In reality, most of the film involves sweaty people walking around looking for water. Strangely, it never enters anyone's head to turn on a tap or purchase a beverage from a vending machine. Things get a bit more exciting towards the end of the film when rogue policemen capture the brother of Tom's new girlfriend. This at least gives Casper the opportunity to wrap a shirt around his head and shoot a gun.

The extent to which you will enjoy "Meltdown" surely depends on your view of Van Dien. Personally, I find something deeply hypnotic about Casper's cheesy, square jawed persona and his determination to appear in trashy, straight-to-TV action thrillers. He reminds me of Zoolander with guns. Despite my appreciation for Casper's body of telemovie work, I would still like to see him make the occasional film that actually gains a cinematic release.

In addition to Casper's stunning acting performance, further "Meltdown" highlights include a couple of exploding cars, a bad CGI meteor and some hilariously improbable science. The other actors in the film are all competent, with Venus Terzo a standout as Tom's first love, Bonnie. Amanda Crew also makes an impression as Tom's daughter.

Once again, Vancouver -- The king of schlocky Canadian 'made for TV' movies has done it again. Yet another movie made as a tax write-off for wealthy or semi-wealthy investors. Gotta hide that money somewhere, eh fat cats? As for the movie;

It was made to be bad and to lose money (for tax loss purposes) and on that level I applaud it. It's certainly a terrible movie and I have to hand it to the producers -- they accomplished everything they set out to make; a terrible money-losing movie. Bravo! Well done!

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The British Columbia Production Services Tax Credit (PSTC) encourages film, television and animation production in BC and is available to either international or Canadian productions produced in British Columbia.

There are four components:

The basic PSTC tax credit is 33% of qualified BC labour expenditures incurred after February 28, 2010.

The REGIONAL tax credit is 6% of qualified BC labour expenditures of the corporation pro-rated by the number of days of principal photography in BC outside of the designated Vancouver area to the total days of principal photography in BC.

The new DISTANT Location tax credit is 6% and is added to the regional tax credit for principal photography done outside of the Lower Mainland Region, north of Whistler and east of Hope, excluding the Capital Regional District.

DIGITAL ANIMATION or VISUAL EFFECTS tax credit is 17.5% of BC labour expenditures directly attributable to digital animation or visual effects activities.

Although the idea was interesting, I was expecting it to be worse considering it was low budget. In my opinion, Meltdown: Days of Destruction is neither bad or good as an overall film, though it has assets that fall in both categories. What I did like about the film was that the acting was surprisingly better than average. Amanda Crew is beautiful and not too bland, Vincent Gale and Stefanie Von Pfetton are good and Casper Van Dien does his best to make his performance more than just a good-looking guy with non-existent acting skills which is something that has been plaguing a number of low-budget films I've seen in recent memory. I did also like the nice settings and the editing wasn't too choppy, while the music is not too over-bearing. The concept is also an interesting one. However, there are things that don't work. The most exciting Meltdown: Days of Destruction gets is towards the end, but around the middle it is rather sluggish and generic with predictable storytelling, very unlikely science and cheesy dialogue. The effects are minimal and while I have seen cheaper ones, in all honesty the effects here are not great in look(especially the meteor) and don't generate any sorts of thrills. The characters I didn't really engage with, some of them don't have much to do and the types of characters involved are reminiscent of the obligatory clichés you'd find in a SyFy original disaster movie. All in all, not a complete meltdown but not particularly much to it either. 5/10 Bethany Cox

MELTDOWN: DAYS OF DESTRUCTION, a would-be TV disaster movie from 2006, is only worth watching if you're wondering what happened to Casper Van Dien's career after STARSHIP TROOPERS (answer: not a lot). It's essentially a heatwave-based thriller, featuring some science guff about an asteroid passing close to the Earth causing our planet to move closer to the sun.

What it all boils down to is a kind of road/post-apocalypse movie, as Van Dien and his colleagues/friends and family are forced to try to get to a place of safety while contending with intense temperatures. Strangely, despite the supposed heatwave, most of the characters continue to wear long shirts and/or jackets - at least the cult '60s flick NIGHT OF THE BIG HEAT made the effort of making the protagonists look all sweaty and dishevelled!

Given the poverty-row budget, most of the threat comes from various looters and bad guys, and it's all done in a gung ho fashion and fairly well paced. But the writing is predictable and the characters non-existent, with none of the cast making much of an impact. About the only scene in the film I enjoyed was the bit with the exploding cars, which was novel; the rest is merely humdrum.