Inferno

I have lived in Los Angeles all my life so I like 90 degree days but over 140 degrees is too much even for me. That is what the story is about, surviving a very high temperature. There were little stories within the big picture. A doctor that lost his license but practicing again as the temperature goes up. A teacher turned soldier that never loses his sense of caring. A pair of bank robbers that get their "just deserts." The true hero in the film is General Craig Maxwell played by Daniel von Bargen that makes life and death decisions in trying to save a city from the terrors of melting ice. Can mankind survive 140 + degrees? Can this tiny planet ever be the same? The answers are will be on display as the planet takes a burning.

Incredibly stupid.

This could have become a good movie. The basic story IS good. Instead, it focuses on a few stereotypical characters that seem to come from a Donald Duck magazine. To continue the analogy with Disney, the crime-story in the movie is at the Mickey-Mouse level, and the metaphors and symbolism like in Three Little Pigs.

And they really tried to squeeze in everything: There is the Love Story, the man worried about his relatives, the bank robbery, the man-to-man-fight between soldiers &c.

Not to mention all the plot holes... A dangerous enemy to intelligence in your living-room. Hopefully, it's not contagious.

• And, of course, in the end, we have to say a prayer! May they never do this kind of movie again. Amen.

INFERNO is a very poor disaster movie, made on the cheap on a TV movie budget. Every deficiency in the story is more than apparent because this is so cheap and cheesy looking. I could have overlooked the problems had the writing not been so predictable and clichéd, making this difficult to sit through.

The disaster stuff involves a flaming fireball heading through the heavens towards the Earth, meaning like NIGHT OF THE BIG HEAT it's one of those films where the characters start off cool but sweat and lose more of their clothes as the narrative progresses. Apparently this aspect of the narrative wasn't interesting enough as the writers instead focus on the various human interest stories which overlap and combine at times.

Leading the cast is James Remar, cast against type as the heroic scientist for a change (he's propped up cinema as a bad guy for years), but he's as wooden as the rest of the actors involved. Story lines include a down-on-his-luck doctor who somehow has to overcome his problems to treat the injured, plus a teenage gang member who must be "saved" by his dedicated teacher. Needless to say such moments are even cheesier than the mawkish sentimentality of VOLCANO and turn this into a right old mess of a film.

INFERNO starts off with a fairly impressive for a TVM starscape effect . We`re also introduced to a scientist who`s called Heller . Don`t you get it ? Heller , Hell-er , Inferno . So I guess someone on the production had some intelligence . However it does become more and more obvious as the TVM progresses that intelligence has been discarded throughout the storyline in order to appeal to an American TVM audience

The story itself is overwhelmed by subplots featuring umpteen stock TVM characters like the tough liberal schoolteacher who`s trying to save a home boy from a life of crime , the doctor who`s lost his medical licence etc . In fact the story concentrates far more on these characters than the approaching disaster that all the potential tension and drama the scenario might have had soon goes up in a puff of smoke , and being a TVM we just know that there won`t be a downbeat ending

There is an onscreen problem I noticed and that is everytime there`s an explosion there`s a massive fireball which looks ridiculous not to mention physically impossible . Look at the scene where the national guard are in a fight with a gang . A soldier fires a grenade into a tower block and the whole building explodes in a fire ball . What a small greanade containing no more than a few ounces of high explosive can do that ! No it can`t . There`s also another scene of army engineers blowing up a dam with plastic explosive and the same fireball effect is seen . Can directors please note that high explosive is not the same as napalm

Having said that I did find INFERNO highly watchable for a TVM and at no time did I find myself wanting to turn it off . It did have some potential and let me repeat the special effects are fairly good considering the budget and it`s not as bad a TVM as some people are making out

This is a made for TV disaster movie created by people who apparently don't have a thought in their heads not put there by other Hollywood disaster movies. Not content with producing something utterly devoid of creativity, they decided to throw in a ton of miserable melodrama, overacting, and unlikable characters to boot.

We begin with some solar flares or something, which makes Los Angeles really hot. A bunch of military types gather in a room and recite fabulous lines like "Have you ever been in a war before? Well, this is a war." Suitably impressed, we then get into the sappy personal interest stories.

There's a teacher who's entire life revolves (to the point of mild insanity) around reforming a gang member. The gang member basically hates the teacher, and once the disaster sets in, he and his fellow gang bangers turn a couple of blocks of LA into a war zone. Oh yes, it's easy to see why we should share the teacher's concern for this person. This whole subplot plays out like some sort of Hollywood cultural awareness sensitivity training seminar.

After this, we've got a couple of tow truck drivers, one a stupid, sleazy male and the other an opportunistic, sleazy female. The male is in love with a lifeguard, who goes on her own subplot with a doctor who lost his license because he was too compassionate and kind and sensitive and generally nausea inducing to practice medicine in a hospital run by an evil HMO. The lifeguard turns, magically, into a professional nurse halfway through so she can work together with the doctor to save the previously mentioned gang banger (as the teacher donates his own blood to save him, and yells "you've got to do something!" as the heart monitor flatlines). Meanwhile, the sleazy female tow truck driver cooks up a plan to rob a bank.

She walks into a military base and walks out with a howitzer. She flips someone a salute, and that fools everyone into thinking that she's in the military and has permission to enter the base. The sleazy male tow truck driver torches the lock off the gate of the military base without anyone noticing, then lights his cigarette with the torch. Once he gets his share of the bank robbery money, he kidnaps the lifeguard/nurse and takes her back to his sewer.

Etcetera. There's some more crap with the military, but it's too awful to get into (It involves the teacher character).

Stephanie Niznik looks terrific, though her character isn't very likable, but she says all her crappy lines with that deliciously deep voice of hers. And she sweats a lot. Kathryn Morris steals the show as the sleazy tow truck driver, the only likable character and the only one who rises above being a compilation of clichés. Everyone else is a cardboard cutout in comparison to her character.