Ataque Solar

Solar Strike aka Solar Attack is a Disaster movie which was made straight for TV, if I am not mistaken. And you immediately can tell that the budget was not all too big to make this film. This clearly reveals when it comes to visuals and dialogues, which can be very cheesy at times. I liked Mark Dacascos in this role though and even if the film is pretty much generic, it was not as bad as some other ratings imply. If you don't take things too serious you might even enjoy this one. Bill Lake in his role as the Russian captain was even fun to watch. Louis Gossett Jr. (some of you might remember him in his role as Jerry from the gorgeous Enemy Mine) as the president of the United States? Well, in movies everything is possible. You might forget this movie soon after you have seen it, but that doesn't mean it is painful to watch or something. If you just want to kill some time by watching a disaster movie, there are way better ones. But also way worse ones.

I will give you two reasons for watching this sci-fi potboiler about a solar burst that threatens to wipe out all life on our planet: martial artist Mark Dascascos as a disgraced scientist who figures out how to save the Earth and Lou Gossett Jr. as a black (!) U.S. president who decides to go along with Dascascos' seemingly harebrained plan. I will watch anything with Dascacos, and being a Baby Boomer, I will always give Mr. Gossett the benefit of the doubt (IRON EAGLE, anyone?). The rest of this is pure crap. Terrible special effects, terrible dialog and way too much talking and standing around. Dascascos does not get to kick much behind in this one. So if you want to see Dascascos in action, watch the French thriller BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF.

SOLAR ATTACK is an extremely dull would-be disaster movie starring everyone's favourite low-rent action hero, Mark Dacascos. In it, solar flares threaten Earth and the usual team of scientists and government types have to team up to discover a way to combat the impending doom.

Unfortunately this is dry and stilted beyond belief, with no attempts made at realism. They don't try to engage the viewer's attention once. The actual disaster elements are limited to a couple of scenes of burning fireballs striking a handful of American cities but such moments, despite being entertaining, are few and far between leading to lots of inactivity and dull dialogue.

Cast-wise, Dacascos is the dashing hero but unforgivably doesn't even get the opportunity to kick any martial arts ass - he has one fight scene which is over in approximately two seconds! Elsewhere we get a tired-looking Louis Gossett Jr. playing the US President, and lots of to-ing and fro-ing on board a Russian sub during the supposedly thrilling climax, which is about as thrilling as me cutting my toenails. I think they were going for a HUNT FOR RED October style vibe but it falls flat, like the rest of this terrible movie.

Solar Attack is about a large coronal mass ejection (CME) from the sun that threatens to ignite the atmosphere and kill everyone. The president must try and make the right decision and he only has one chance. The scientists and advisors are split, but the president errs on the side of caution and authorizes some dangerous operations. While this film deals with a lesser known extinction level event, the science is still dubious as presented. For the most part, the performances aren't convincing and seems rushed. I think this has more to do with the directing rather than the acting. Dialog is common with little snap. I doubt that even big name actors could have pulled this out of the C+ range. Special effects were nonspecific, general, and unrealistic.

If I could have given this a half star I would have. We watch SyFy movies for laughs. We enjoy the bad acting, the awful special effects, the ridiculous-ness of it all. While this definitely had the bad acting (aside from Louis Gossett, Jr. he was fine for the couple of minutes he was in it...but why, Louis, why?) it had none of the fun. There was a lot of conversation, a lot of 'science', but no gratuitous violence that we've come to love from the SyFy movies, none of the laughs, just a bunch of serious talking about the why's of it all. I don't care, I just want to watch someones arm come off or some silly line I can quote afterwards. Skip it. Watch Megasnake or Frankenfish for some good quality cheese. This is boring monotony. The only fun we had was when they mentioned how big something was and we compared whatever it was to the size of Joanne Kelly's distractingly large upper lip. We fast forwarded the last 20 minutes to see the predictable ending and regretted wasting a Friday night on this one.