Survivor

This "movie" is about a running blond pretty girl. Originally she came from a spaceship, but that does not matter very much. The story is paper thin or to say it precisely, there is no story. It is one of that stories which is that flat, that it bends time and space and you know not only from the beginning how this movie will end, you will just know the complete plot. Thats because you have seen this story in 10 other equal cheap "Oh no! My spaceship crashed!" scifi movies. I am pretty sure the screenplay was not longer then. "Ships having an accident, then pretty girl runs around, kills some evil dudes, finds a horse yadayadayada the end." Its one of that movies you can watch when you already planned to fall asleep at your couch or when you are drunk like a skunk and want to watch some easy nothing. If you watching it sober, you will for sure fast forward half of the movie.

I was pretty much captivated by the lead actress and would have turned it off after 15 minutes if not for her. That face! My guess is she played some kind of sport growing up because she's athletic and easily the best part about this movie since she lends some credibility to the action sequences and has amazingly expressive eyes. As an aside Hollywood seems to have forgotten how important facial expressions are in conveying what is going on, preferring to dazzle with effects and hammer you over the head with inane dialogue.

Anywho, Chuchran does a great job, but it's just too rough with too little plot for anyone to overcome.

There is almost no plot after a scout ship crashes on unknown planet, unless you count Kate traveling 60 kilometers over semi-mountainous terrain to rescue her injured captain and then a score more to find the crash site so she can send a distress beacon.

There is very little dialogue for at least half the movie, which is good because Danielle Chuchran delivers it poorly in quick but flat lines.

One thing is for certain. Kate, who has lived all her two-score years of life on a space ship is in physical shape that boggles the mind. She runs and climbs and runs and climbs. In crashing, Kate falls out of the scout ship and plummets apparently miles but opens a tiny chute about 50 feet above the water and survives. Then she gets knocked out and captured, but her captor is gone when she wakes up so she escapes. He or another of the natives (all wearing masks) traps her again, but she escapes again by simply climbing away. Chased by a half-dozen or more natives who are almost on top of her, somehow she is magically away from them and "safe". Three monsters corner her with three arrows left so she climbs a sheer cliff, then shoots at least twice that many arrows to kill them all.

More running, more impossible fighting. The monsters have 4 inch claws but never use them and outweigh Kate 2-1 but she defeats several of them in hand to hand several times.

Finally some plot and dialogue with about 20 minutes left in this 1-1/2 hour film. And the plot is not that great.

In this part of the movie, natives remove their clumsy masks which appeared to be for breathing, but apparently they don't need them.

Chuchran has a pretty enough face, if you enjoy looking at a dirty girl with unkempt hair. But she is not enough to carry this movie with its ridiculous fights and lame plot. Wait til you see the ending.

This film is, indeed, all about Danielle Chuchran. She is beautiful, incredibly athletic and a quite decent actress. The sci- fi in the film is of the type of Firefly, you know, you go to another planet and there are American cowboys there. So not that much. However, the few sci- fi bits in the story did further it, so in my mind that part was a success.

After enjoying the hell out of Shadow of the Cabal, I had to see this movie as well, especially since it starred Danielle, and I can tell you it did not disappoint. The story, as usual (shame, Arrowstorm!), was a bit silly, but simple enough to not bother me tremendously. Kevin Sorbo did play a larger role, although it's becoming a pattern in these films: he appears as some sort of father authority figure, does a few scenes, then splits.

The action scenes were really good, as expected from a professional stunt actress, but also the director has to be good at it. The scenes were great and reminded me of the orc elf battle that hooked me when watching Shadow of the Cabal. The implanted computer, scanner and holographic screen was a great addition and allowed the story to move fast over some logistical problems like how people find each other, coordinate over large distances and detect food or injuries.

There were issues with the film. The technical details in the introduction almost threw me off completely in the beginning of the film. The character of Weston was ridiculous and completely unnecessary - they could have done more with him. Also they took their sweet time to "get it". I won't spoil it here, but as a hint just listen carefully at the alien language and you can figure it out in the first 15 minutes.

Other than that, few characters and a lot less character development made this almost a pure action film. Danielle was great, and also Melanie Stone, which you may (barely) recognize from the Mythica series. Sorbo acted well, but his character was a little bit ridiculous. He had a lot of scenes about bones and almost all cracked me up - no pun intended (OK, I did intend it a little).

It is far from perfect, but was one of the best movies in this particular genre and I really don't understand the mostly mean comments the film has received here. I mean, if they would have used cars instead of running around it would have been Mad Max, and you bloody loved that one!

And Saves the Human Race. Oh, my "Review is too short". Now, it's not.