À l'aube de la destruction

This movie was actually a lot better than I imagined it would be. I am extremely critical of films, but for some odd reason, this one had a bit of this, a bit of that, and just enough something to make me watch watch it all the way through.

This was no better than a good B movie and far better than some network television shows people think are so awesome. Some actors were good, others need to go back to acting school...but Steve Weber anchored this movie just enough to make it watchable. Treat Williams also made it OK to watch as well. I was actually looking for it to be a bit longer.

The storyline could have been developed a bit more, but other than that, sci-fi buffs can sit through this one.

This movie has the making of a much longer mini-series, imo. Come on, who doesn't want to see Ms Cox run around om film?

It's not the best acting, nor story lines but it's an ok sofa lazing Sunday afternoon show, it doesn't take much to follow & allows you to type up reviews and watch.

I love Christina Cox, her performances are always amazing and she's clearly the star of this show. However, the plot is nonsensical and irrational. The scenes are nice and special effects are not bad.

But the biggest problem with this series is the PLOT and MESSAGE being sent to people that is completely the wrong message to send to people. Your typical UNORIGINAL Frankenstein message "Stop playing God, scientists!" This is by far the dumbest, anti-intellectual message movies/films have spread throughout the decades.

Without spoiling anything... Scientists discover a source of energy but certain things happen that cause disasters and it simply logically doesn't follow why they would happen in other random areas. It also doesn't make sense that they can't just pull the plug. It further doesn't make sense why an evil CEO would risk jail time and possible catastrophic results just to not have a "bad quarterly review." A lot of plot holes are included in the movie, such as the Russian-sub-plot as to how something could be kept under wraps.

Essentially the conclusion the filmmakers want you to draw is: Science is crazy, magical, and accidents "might" happen. Which is simply the antithesis of what science is about and accidents such as this never happen on this scale in scientific experiments by scientists. There's a reason they do pre-tests to pre-tests to tests, and in this film, they act like even those pre-tests can go wrong.

The worst "energy-related disaster" in our REAL world, such as chernobyl, was because of engineers who didn't know what they were doing. It was because of lack of safety protocols, lack of computer automated systems, and outdated equipment that was UNDERFUNDED. That is the lesson to learn from Chernobyl, when you don't invest in a technology for increasing its safety standards.

So if anyone thinks that they should draw the lesson of: "We shouldn't fund such experiments, we don't fully understand!" -- That is the incorrect lesson. The mere act of not-funding-something, is the lesson to be drawn from real life events like Chernobyl, because machines and systems get too old; protocols become outdated; and these technologies never improve and become safer.

As for the "Don't play God" nonsense, why would God give humans the ability to do these things if he didn't want you to discover them? Or why would he allow millions of people to die, in such a "failed experiment" just to teach a simple lesson about that? It makes no sense logically or philosophically, and filmmakers should stop trying to create conclusions for their audience that they probably never even asked a philosopher about.

Particle accelerator, opposing beams of protons, power, vacuum, magnets, cooling... that's all the details about the experiment. Not even a black hole is mentioned in the movie. I'm not an expert of physics, but even for me there was way too little explanation what is going on. Aura? The only explanation of the glow above the facility is "aura" and lightning? Come on... Why electric sockets are set on fire? What happens to Denver whose high-rise buildings looks to be sucked in by a force field? Why that happens on the other side of the globe at Paris and London? We don't even see any destruction done except one district set on fire. I expected the movie to be more scientific than this. Instead, it focused on the main scientist's daughter and electrician's wife. There is not even a dedicated power plant for the accelerator, only a transformer station. All in all, the message of the movie seems to be that there are obsessed scientists paid buy evil corporations, and an opposing environmentalist group that is trying to stop the evil experiment. The bad, bad corporation also is growing gmo crops made from cancer metastasis cells just to make the company even more evil, even though the gmo thing does not influence the scenario in any way. So instead of science fiction we get a caricature of careless scientists on a leash controlled by evil corporation who together are ready to destroy a city for profit. And an Occupy movement that are "fighting" to save "our universe". This certainly prefers fear over science, and there is enough of this madness already. A cheap way to fuel the amateur anti-whatever opposition.

This isn't a perfect film, it's not high-budget, it's an end-of-the-world disaster flick. Anyone going in expecting anything more is severely delusional. There are some flaws, a few corny lines, and the ending is slightly lame (but not totally). There have been FAR worse disaster films. It is definitely not a 1-star film as some would have people believe.

The directing and acting in this was above par. The story line was very cliche, very predictable, nothing unusual. It does however have some decent special effects. I particularly liked the acting of Aleks Paunovic, the Russian electric lineman. In truth most of the actors do a fairly decent job. The film starts out interesting and maintains its momentum through both episodes. I suspect it is better to binge-watch it online rather than lose that momentum in a 2-night micro-series.

Several reviews here are extraordinarily harsh. One has to wonder what they were expecting going in. You don't go see a Transformers movie and complain that it's about giant robots, nor go to a hamburger joint and complain they don't have gourmet food. This is obviously a low-budget, made-for-TV disaster flick, and people are knocking it for being a low budget disaster flick? Get real.

This is considerably better than most films of this type. I found it interesting all the way through. No, it's not hard science (does anyone here even KNOW hard science when it comes to dark matter?). There's a lot of supposition, conjecture and imagination going on. It's not intended to be cerebral fiction.

Overall an entertaining film, which is all one should expect it to be. Not the best film ever made, but by no means one of the worst as some "reviewers" here would have us believe. If you have three hours to kill, it's worth a view. People giving this movie an unbalanced 1-star review are doing no one any favors. If you don't like B class movies, don't watch B class movies. Duh.