Meltdown - Trappola nucleare

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 ! "

Poor Casper Van Dien, his career has slid a long way from Tarzan and Starship Troopers.

In Meltdown he's a policeman who just happens to be dating TV reporter Stefanie Von Pfeten and her brother is a scientist who's trying to deal with a speeding comment headed for Earth. But in the runaway comet business, even a near miss causes some real problems as the Earth's orbit goes out of kilter.

From the survival of the Earth we go to the survival of Van Dien and his immediate family. His daughter's gangbanger boyfriend, Ryan McDonell actually proves to be of some use especially when he suspects a guy he knows as a crooked cop might mean the Van Dien group a lot of harm.

My only question here is, why didn't they have Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton and the rest of that crew to deal with the nasty comet?

Pass this one up folks.

I would rather have someone cut out my eyeballs with a razor blade than have to watch this movie again. I watched it from start to end thinking it couldn't get any worse....BUT IT DID. The writers and producers should be slapped for putting this kind of crap on television. The actors are ALL terrible. Get out of Hollywood you fools and go work at McDonalds sweeping the floors and emptying the trash. Anyone that thinks this movie is even remotely decent should be hung. They are an embarrassment to humanity. To think we have soldiers putting their lives on the line for anyone that produces this kind of inane garbage. Makes me embarrassed to say I'm an American.

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