Destruição em Alto Mar

Path of Destruction was entertaining and had a plot that made sense within itself, so there's not much more you can ask for in a television movie. The nanobots idea is far-fetched, but it is loosely based on stuff I've seen in Scientific American. And isn't that what a sci-fi movie is all about? Making up a story that's not real and then taking it seriously? If you don't like that then don't watch sci-fi. I'm a big Star Trek and Stargate fan, so I accept far-fetched stories quite easily. My measure is if the far-fetched premise is true to itself. In Path of Destruction, the premise was true to itself. Also, Danica is beautiful and gave it her all, Chris Pratt was very good, and Stephen Furst provided the levity.

A fun movie to get on DVD or check out on television. Not perfect due to the budget, but not bad at all either.

On a large oil rig platform, worth $14 million, many important people work. Attractive investigative reporter Danica McKellar (as Katherine Stern) is there, looking to prove oil companies dump chemical wastes. She is close to cracking the case when a horrible incident releases a black fuzz. The black fuzz begins killing workers and triggers a fire. Although she is hit hard on the forehead by a hook, Ms. McKellar is one of the few survivors. In the hospital with a white bandage on her forehead, McKellar realizes the black fuzz was a shady incident; it soon becomes a huge black cloud. Due to being so smart, McKellar is now hunted by oil executives...

McKellar escapes from the hospital and seeks help from attractive blond Chris Pratt (as Nathan S. McCain). The duo must try to escape from the clutches of oil executive David Keith (as Roy Stark) and save the world from the black cloud, which is causing weather to run amok all over the planet. Director Stephen Furst (as Louie Myman) serves double duty as Mr. Pratt's unlikely playboy pal. Direction and quick editing provide a little TV Movie excitement during the times when our heroine is on the run, but the nasty cloud is not exciting. There isn't much you can do when your monster special effects are a fuzzy black cloud and a shaky camera.

*** Path of Destruction (9/24/05) Stephen Furst ~ Danica McKellar, Chris Pratt, David Keith, Stephen Furst

Although it looks like he did only 2 or 3 days of work on this utter shlockfest of a Sci-Fi Channel piece of junk, poor David Keith has his name attached to this garbage. At least he's working and drawing a check, but it's a long way from the Brubaker days ...

This sci-fi mess should be required viewing for all films students: as an example of what a film looks like when things go completely wrong. The production design is all but nonexistent, the direction is sloppy and terrible at the same time, the acting is as bad as it gets, and the script sounds like an 11th grade English class did it as a week-long project, an hour at a time over five days.

I'm still waiting for the David Keith / Keith David co-starrer. These are two good actors when they get good material, and they've suffered long enough in the B-movie realm. Tarantino, are you listening?

Poor acting, mediocre CGI and technical ignorance abound in this time filler. Some of the plot points don't hold up to even the barest scrutiny. They draft a bimbo reporter to serve as bombardier when they have an entire base of Air Force personnel to pick from? They push for an EMP bomb over a nuclear blast (the biggest EMP bomb there is, BTW) because radiation is too non-directional like shotgun pellets? Dental braces attract lightning? Come on. And why are molecular disassemblers causing storms and hail anyway? Even the bad acting and video game quality CGI could be tolerated with a little technical competence. The underlying concept is OK but the execution is pretty bad. Trying to guess which eastern European country is substituting for Alaska (and the winner is...... Bulgaria!) was fun. And David Keith and Stephen Furst chew the scenery in amusing if one-note performances. Any time you can completely and totally describe a character with two words, like horny yokel or corporate greedhead, you're in trouble.

I've watched worse, though. And can't David Keith get any better roles than these second rate Sci-fi channel crapfests? Every month he's in at least one (two this month) of these celluloid WMD's. He used to be somebody. Maybe he figured, "Hell, I'm already in Bulgaria filming Epoch 2, I'll just knock another one off while I'm over here". Maybe the beer's cheap. Who knows.

Okay, okay...I know my summary says it all. Another Sci Fi Channel "original." Well, wait just a minute folks; this one actually seems to have a grain of originality.

I'm afraid the nanotechnology concept is where it ends, though. Bad acting. Horrible CGI. Ridiculous plot twists. Starring Winnie and directed by Flounder.

But this one is so horribly bad, folks, that it's entertaining. We're not talking PLAN 9 bad, but pretty close. Another reviewer indicated that this may have been intentional, but I'm not buying it. For those of you that enjoy this kind of thing, buy some beer, turn off your mind, relax and float down stream.