Ciel de feu

I would rather have someone cut out my eyeballs with a razor blade than have to watch this movie again. I watched it from start to end thinking it couldn't get any worse....BUT IT DID. The writers and producers should be slapped for putting this kind of crap on television. The actors are ALL terrible. Get out of Hollywood you fools and go work at McDonalds sweeping the floors and emptying the trash. Anyone that thinks this movie is even remotely decent should be hung. They are an embarrassment to humanity. To think we have soldiers putting their lives on the line for anyone that produces this kind of inane garbage. Makes me embarrassed to say I'm an American.

MELTDOWN: DAYS OF DESTRUCTION, a would-be TV disaster movie from 2006, is only worth watching if you're wondering what happened to Casper Van Dien's career after STARSHIP TROOPERS (answer: not a lot). It's essentially a heatwave-based thriller, featuring some science guff about an asteroid passing close to the Earth causing our planet to move closer to the sun.

What it all boils down to is a kind of road/post-apocalypse movie, as Van Dien and his colleagues/friends and family are forced to try to get to a place of safety while contending with intense temperatures. Strangely, despite the supposed heatwave, most of the characters continue to wear long shirts and/or jackets - at least the cult '60s flick NIGHT OF THE BIG HEAT made the effort of making the protagonists look all sweaty and dishevelled!

Given the poverty-row budget, most of the threat comes from various looters and bad guys, and it's all done in a gung ho fashion and fairly well paced. But the writing is predictable and the characters non-existent, with none of the cast making much of an impact. About the only scene in the film I enjoyed was the bit with the exploding cars, which was novel; the rest is merely humdrum.

"Meltdown" is a disaster (tele)movie about really hot weather starring Casper Van Dien. That one sentence is probably enough to make most people run for cover but as a disaster movie devotee and long suffering fan of Mr Van Dien, I found "Meltdown" pretty irresistible.

You could drive a semi-trailer through the holes in the film's plot. In short, scientists fire a nuclear weapon into a meteor with the intention of developing a meteor defence program. However, instead of fragmenting, a large chunk of the rock heads towards earth only to be deflected. Unfortunately, the near miss manages to push the earth out of orbit, dragging it towards the sun and resulting in really hot weather.

Casper plays Tom, a police officer, who attempts to save his family and new girlfriend from the heatwave and protect them from the looters who have taken over the city. This synopsis actually makes the film sound more interesting than it is. In reality, most of the film involves sweaty people walking around looking for water. Strangely, it never enters anyone's head to turn on a tap or purchase a beverage from a vending machine. Things get a bit more exciting towards the end of the film when rogue policemen capture the brother of Tom's new girlfriend. This at least gives Casper the opportunity to wrap a shirt around his head and shoot a gun.

The extent to which you will enjoy "Meltdown" surely depends on your view of Van Dien. Personally, I find something deeply hypnotic about Casper's cheesy, square jawed persona and his determination to appear in trashy, straight-to-TV action thrillers. He reminds me of Zoolander with guns. Despite my appreciation for Casper's body of telemovie work, I would still like to see him make the occasional film that actually gains a cinematic release.

In addition to Casper's stunning acting performance, further "Meltdown" highlights include a couple of exploding cars, a bad CGI meteor and some hilariously improbable science. The other actors in the film are all competent, with Venus Terzo a standout as Tom's first love, Bonnie. Amanda Crew also makes an impression as Tom's daughter.

From the opening sequence I thought I had MELTDOWN nailed as a cross genre film which mixes DEEP IMPACT with a cop thriller . This seemed a strange idea , but that's not how the plot unravels . Apparently the near miss with the asteroid causes the Earth to spin off its axis which leads to the world's temperature rising , rising and rising . So we've got a plot featuring something similar to the novels of Wyndham and John Christopher where a group of people have to find sanctuary or else they'll join most of the world's population in dying a slow terrible death

I can't say MELTDOWN is a great apocalypse movie but since it's a direct to video/DVD film therefore lacking a big budget it's a relatively good meaningless time waster . My only real problem is a line of dialogue spouted by the scientist character in the sewer which happens half way the running time which will you leave you gasping " oh dear I think they've given away the ending ! "

Poor Casper Van Dien, his career has slid a long way from Tarzan and Starship Troopers.

In Meltdown he's a policeman who just happens to be dating TV reporter Stefanie Von Pfeten and her brother is a scientist who's trying to deal with a speeding comment headed for Earth. But in the runaway comet business, even a near miss causes some real problems as the Earth's orbit goes out of kilter.

From the survival of the Earth we go to the survival of Van Dien and his immediate family. His daughter's gangbanger boyfriend, Ryan McDonell actually proves to be of some use especially when he suspects a guy he knows as a crooked cop might mean the Van Dien group a lot of harm.

My only question here is, why didn't they have Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton and the rest of that crew to deal with the nasty comet?

Pass this one up folks.