Portal da Morte

Good story concept. The special effects could have been a little better. I think this is a movie made by SciFi channel. Being a made for TV movie it isn't half bad. The story reminds me of the movie "Sphere" It is worth a watch based on the story concept alone. I'm glad I watched it.

The plot of this story is interesting, coupled with the Millenium anxiety that was prevalent during the time of release. However, huge hole in plot, lack of background and poor scripting resulted in a mediocre "armageddon" movie.

The background is that an ancient, gigantic, floating rock-like object suddenly appeared out from underground after 4 billion years. Of course, scientists, together with the prerequite of military force have to investigate. David Keith, plays the main protegonist who is supposedly incredibly intelligent and works under a female diplomat.

The usual, predictable sparks appear, between male and female, scientists and the military, USA vs China (the location is supposedly close to the Chinese border in Asia).

The worst thing is that there is potential for this show to have much better ratings. However, horrible scripts that don't into details, just action, action, action, coupled with the director's inability to elicit any emotion from the wooden actors/actresses except for the extreme ones made this show a movie that only a geek would like.

There was not much I expected from Epoch, thinking that surely we would have one of these B-movies with pausing dialog and s****y script. So in some ways I was surprised, as the result was much better then I expected. What saved this film was pretty good idea and not too bad script. The main actors did well, keeping their conversation fast paced and witty. There were some parts that irritated me though, mostly to do with the government, which seemed to be filled with idiots. It had a weird balance between comedy and action, which I don't think really worked here, and even though some wit is good, they should have kept it more realistic. I especially enjoyed Brian Thompson, which we have seen in so many TV shows (Star Trek, X-File). He managed to actually act here, which he is not allowed to do often, and I think he is underrated as an actor. But the performance of Ryan O'Neal just irritated me along with a few of the others; with such bad over-acting that it was painful to watch. However, this film lacks action and the storyline went steadily down hill from beginning to end. The idea could have been used to make a pretty good action movie, with a little bit better worked out storyline, and much better casting. 5/10

I first viewed this film when it aired in 2000. I was impressed by the intensity of David Keith's performance. Having seen him in Fire Starter, I was glad to see him as lead in another SCI-FI film. Not a particular fan of Ryan O'Neal, I must confess this role was executed extremely well.

I enjoyed this film from Title to credits and would recommend taking a look if you enjoy the "mystery of origin" venue.

When viewing this film, take a tongue-in-cheek view of budget, location, etc. Enjoy the film for the intense action and great performances rendered by David Keith and Ryan O'Neal, try not to be too critical of plot or content. Just let yourself be entertained for an hour and a half.

Ahh, the critics who are so quick to dismiss this made for TV movie often make me wonder what they're really looking for.

I picked this movie off the shelf of Blockbuster thinking "hey, unknown Sci-Fi movie, must be awful, but I bet there's some sample material for me in it." What a shock when I got it home and found it was actually clever and worth watching!

To begin with, the script is actually pretty smart, and filled with surprisingly witty dialog that had me laughing out loud at parts. The CGI effects are as good as they get for a movie of this budget, and are better than I expected them to be. The story, while mildly predictable, keeps you thinking, and is certainly of a bigger scope than the standard "five people trapped in a unknown alien artifact" that I expected. Any story that acknowledges politics and an outside world has to be given more credit than some viewers (and commenters here) would care to admit.

Overall, if you've got a rainy day and are looking for a little diamond in the rough, this isn't a bad way to spend two hours. There are faces you'll recognize, some intelligent unfolding of the story, reasonable cinematography and direction, and Epoch is an overall entertaining bit of work. 7.5 out of 10.