Life on the Line

Feel good movie. Maybe not technically accurate but it is nice to see a move about people who work hard and are willing to risk their lives on a fairly regular basis doing a job that not everyone can do or is willing to even try. The bad reviews miss the point entirely. It is about hard work, sacrifice, personal pride and the love of a man for child and young woman. We need more moves that have a positive theme and make you feel good about your fellow man.

This started as an interesting looking movie, based on a real story. An aging power line is being replaced accross an entire state in the South of US and we follow a company of lines men working on the line, We see an uncle played by Ttavolta, bringing up his adopted niece into a young woman. There are hugs and kissed between the uncle and his niece. Then later in the movie there are more hugs and kisses. Feels like the South!

The small town life is cliche ridden, with tough guys saddlin up for blue collar work in the day and gathering at bars in the evening for booze and fight.

There are some decent buildup later in the movie, but just as things get a bit exciting, cheesy dialog scenes meses up with the progress of the story.

The most impressive thing in this movie is watching rugged John Travolta, or Beloved Uncle Beau or Bub or Bubba actually climbing up a giant pole!

And jokes aside, the acting of Bubba lifts the movie a lot. The rest of the actors felt a little under par. They should have used Sharon Stone better in this movie too. The cross cutting in the movie where there is a bit action really brings the movie down.

So besides Unca Bubba, this movie turned out not so good as it could have been. What would have been a missed opportunity here is showing more footage from high rise power line poles to show the sctual hazards of this LINE OF WORK. Instead we get hugs and kissed from Unca BUBBA.

and plan to take a shot every time you spot a cliché. Then you'll be drunk early in to this movie and it won't hurt as bad. My husband actually IS a lineman, as was my father, and if I took a shot for every time I heard my husband sigh and shake his head as we watched this, I'd be dead from alcohol poisoning.

I was so looking forward to this film which is classified as an action/drama film. Mrs. Shullivan and I both worked for the local utility company and we are aware that the risk these lineman (line persons) take working on high voltage systems is real, is extremely dangerous and has led to some unfortunate and untimely deaths.

Life on the Line seems to portray all the lineman in this film as having personal demons, a group of hard drinking brothers, who appear to be standing in line waiting to get themselves killed in the line of duty. Even worse than the depressed characters of the main stars of this feature film were all the clichés that were used so often that I started gagging on my popcorn.

The film did hold my attention for the first half, but as more and more clichés were expressed by the so-called heroes, and the irritating caption at the bottom of the screen kept appearing with the countdown days to the day of the big storm, you had to know someone was going to lose their "Life on the Line" eh?

So the storm comes in more than just by the usual way (no spoiler here) and we see how when a life is lost a new generation of potential line persons are born. I don't think we have to worry about seeing a sequel to this film. Lights out....nothing more to report.

John Travolta is a line man, one of those guys you see in a hard helmet and red vest on power lines, doing something dangerous and obscure.... and the power running. Lives depend on that power, and he's got s pregnant niece, her boyfriend as his new, unobservant apprentice, and a storm on the way.

Watching this attempt to mythologize another form of Texas Hard Man in the aftermath of at least 86 Texans dying because their power grid went out last month.... well it interferes with the impulse; it's hard to print the legend with the facts still fresh in your mind. It's also startling to hear Travolta with a twang overlaying his usual accent, but to my untutored ears, he's pretty good, his face buried under a beard. If's a good updating of the standard western tropes. Perhaps when this year's events have faded, it will seem better.