Life on the Line

The movie has SOME entertainment value to, at least, watch it once; for that I gave it a 3, but, oh my god....

I have read some of the reviews from some actual lineman that testify to how ridiculous this is. The soap opera aspects, the cliched dialog and circumstances that are delivered to us will make you cringe; this is just extremely lazy writing and film-making.

Yes, there is actually a character called "poke-chop", for crying out loud.

The lineman of this country deserve to be recognized, but not like this.

Besides the fact that as a movie, it was barely okish, I didn't realize that was Sharon Stone so I'll either give her kudos on the makeup job, or not blame her for hiding behind it, and knocking off the paycheck work. I don't even blame Travolta, he actually gave a sincere performance, given what he had to work with. The real issue here was in the writing, direction and edit. I just didn't buy any of it. The bar swilling, fist fighting, ol' boys approach to the film was overdone to the max. I don't need to be told a real linemen life (or any profession) is not actually like that, so why lie to me?

What I did appreciate was the lineman commenting here on the inaccuracies of the line work being done in the film. Like most, I know nothing about the details of their work, but I knew ... I just knew as I was watching, that Hollywood had it wrong here, and made it as sensational as they possibly could. A whole cities power supply resting on one switch? Do ya think I'm an idiot? And apparently it wouldn't have worked like that anyway says a lineman.

When will movie makers realize that its not wrong to actually portray someones job correctly, make sure they get the details right and let go of the need to push beyond reality to the point of reckless? The problem is I don't lose trust in the actors, I lose trust in the system that simply cant understand what I really want in a movie.

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.

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.

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.