Au coeur de la tempête

Well, I have to admit that I wasn't exactly expecting a whole lot from this 2014 TV movie titled "Category 5", as I sat down to watch it for the very first time here in 2023. But still, I opted to give the movie a fair chance, since I had never seen or heard about it before.

Writer E. M. McCoy delivered a very generic plot, even for a natural disaster movie. Sure, "Category 5" was watchable for what it turned out to be, but man, this was as predictable as they come. And E. M. McCoy played it safe and essentially followed every single trope there was to the genre. If you have seen any of the countless similar natural disaster movies out there, then you know what you're in for should you decide to sit down and watch "Category 5".

The movie had Burt Reynolds and C. Thomas Howell on the cast list, so at least there were some familiar faces. The acting by the cast in "Category 5" was okay, though I have to say that it was somewhat strained to watch a very tired Burt Reynolds on the screen here.

Visually then "Category 5" was actually better than I had anticipated. Sure, this wasn't top notch special effects, but it worked out well enough as intended. Take heed though, that director Rob King makes use of a lot of stock footage of storms, which sort of gives the movie a very amateurish and low budget feel.

While "Category 5" was watchable for what it was, then this is hardly a movie that I will recommend for fans of the natural disaster genre. Nor is it a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time.

My rating of "Category 5" lands on a four out of ten stars.

Some silly dialogue, poor acting and a cliché ridden plot stop this movie from being an average TV movie. In fact Burt Reynolds is the only real reason to watch this Plot In A Paragraph: After a family survives Hurricane Katrina, Charlie DuPuis (C. Thomas Howell) and his wife Ellie, their son Danny and Charlie's Dad (Burt Reynolds) who is only referred to as "pops" discover there is another storm on the way, but this one is much, much worse.

C. Thomas Howell whose work I have enjoyed in the past is awful here, I was preoccupied wondering where the actor I loved in "The Outsiders" had gone. Whilst Burt Reynolds is not looking his best these days (showing the after effects of his recent quadruple heart bypass) he brings a certain panache to his role, and he is certainly the most believable actor in the movie.

Featuring an epilogue of interviews with real life survivors of 'Hurricane Katrina', this micro budgeted TV movie tries for dignified reverence, but only achieves cheap over-sentimentality.

The wind machine gets a serious workout as our besieged family bunker down in the hopes of surviving a category 5 storm after having earlier survived Katrina. They intermittently bicker, leave the house and then try to outrun the approaching storm by car, whilst sage Burt Reynolds holds vigil back at the house awaiting their return.

Reynolds is a mere shadow of his former self and whilst his presence is welcome, he hasn't the energy to keep this flotsam from being blown away. Nor can reliable leading man C. Thomas Howell make this turkey tender, again spending an inordinate amount of his screen time driving, swerving to miss imaginary objects and pounding rain added in post production via inferior CGI effects.

Hard to tell whether it's well intentioned or just exploitative, either way it's a technically inept mess that not even the presence of Reynolds can redeem.