My first Stab at a Movie Review

[Evan3]

Title: Boa (AKA New Alcatraz) 2000
Director: Phillip J. Roth
Tagline: 1,000 feet below the Arctic Surface, lies 100 Feet of Terror

Actors:
Dr. Robert Trenton - Dean Cain: After playing Superman on TV, his next big step was playing a self centered, paleontologist skilled in antarctic reptiles
Dr. Jessica Platt-Trenton - Elizabeth Lackey: She plays the adventerous wife and co antarctic expert of Dr. Trenton. She also has some strange looking boobs.
Yuri Brescov - Mark Sheppard: The saving grace of this whole film... He plays a Chechan rebel and the role of the sympathetic, not really a bad guy, villian
Major Larsten - Dean Biasucci: I dont know who this guy is, but he was the most entertaining charater of the movie, incinerated
The Warden - Craig Wasson: Huge Napolean complex and incinerates himself
Sgt. Quinn- Grand L. Bush: Plays the chief of guards and actually is the only character with believable emotions, he wants to leave the prison instead of fighting the snake. Too bad, he is incinerated.
The Boa Constrictor: 100 Feet of CGI fun, kept alive for thousands of years inside a rock of pure Nitrogen, but what did it eat?

Plot:
The United Nations somehow pulls together and decides to build an unescapable prison called New Alcatraz in Antarctica and house the world's worst criminals there. You also meet the Drs. Trenton who are turning down tenure at Harvard for a chance to do field work. The prison houses six criminals led by Chechan rebel Yuri Brescov and include mainly killers and one computer hacker. However, while the construction workers are drilling through the ice, after very quick character development, they unleash a prehistoric Boa (that has a spiked tail) which procedes to kill the prison guards and the two construction workers.

Enter: Major Larsen, who brings a group of his fiercest men (total military 5) and the two doctors  (who no one listens to anyays) to rescue the remaining prison guards and kill the Boa Constrictor.  He and his men come armed with MK 47s and shotguns, all the equipment you would need to kill a giant snake! Plus, the transport plane can only stay for 12 hours before freezing, then they will have to wait 30 hours for another one.

However, the biggest menace here is not the snake, but it is human stupidity. First only one person has the access to leave the prison, Major Larsen, not the wardon, not Quinn, just Larsen. Why wouldnt the guards be allowed to leave, it makes no sense. Anyways, Dr. Trenton deduces that the snake is living in the warmest part of the building and so Major Larson, his force of combatants, the Drs. and the remaining prison guards all rush down to kill the snake (who lives in a very explosive part of the prison). THe Boa takes out most of the military men one by one, sending the major into a wild fire frenzy in which he hits a gas main, and incinerates everyone but the snake. While taking pictures of the boa, Mrs. Trenton apparently is eaten, Dr. Larsen just curses and moves on. Dont shed tears for the past I always say.

Dr. Larsen convinces the warden to release the prisoners and they decide to escape right out through the snake's layer, and they split up into two groups, reasoning the snake can't be in two places at once (it can though). Yuri heads one group and finds Mrs. Larsen, who escaped through an air duct, and while protecting her, loses all of the rest of his group to the ravenous snake. Dr. Larsen and the warden heads the other group, they encounter the snake in the same room Major Larson did and this time the warden goes on a shooting spree, and hits the same gas pipe, incinerating himself, and one of the convicts. So, Yuri and Mrs. Larson make it out first, and drama (of some kind) is built when you wonder if they will come back for Dr. Larson (he is a criminal after all) Dr. Larsen also makes it out, losing his last group mate in the home stretch, once again he curses the snake and moves on quickly. He seems lost in the arctic when suddenly, there is Yuri, who can lead him back to the plane.

SO, it is all good, the plane launches and all of the heroes on board. Some more character development to make Yuri even more sypmpathetic happens here. But wit, what is this, the plane seems to be a little heavy. That is right, the Boa has lefft its comfy home to make one more struggle with our heroes.

Foavorite Line: "Can you still fly this plane"
                              "Is the snake gone??"
                              "yes"
                             "then I can fly this plane"


Things I learned:
Nitrogen keeps anything alive for thousands of years, regardless of lack of food and water

If a student hugs her professor, she probably wants him

It is very easy to leave a school sponsored dig for a military assignment, it takes only 10 seconds in fact.

Just  thinking about buying nucular weapons can get you sentenced to prison for life.

Rating: 2 slimes - not awful, but not enjoyable either, oh Annaconda, how I miss thee.


So, any comments????

[Dunners]

I dunno man I hated anaconda, maybe boa will be more redeeming.

[Flangepart]

Hummm...not bad!
Learning the lessions at the feet of the master, i'd say. Rock on, dude.

[Fearless Freep]

My first thought is that it's stylistically too much like Andrew's reviews.   Andrew's reviews are good, but unless you're doing a review you want Andrew to put up as a guest review, you should probably come up with your own way of formulating your ideas.  I like SciFi Films "What Works/What Doesn't Work" seperation, and Nathan's "Notable Totables" is also really cool, as some other ideas

[Evan3]

Thanks Feerless, this is the only board I go to, so that could be why it is so heavily Andrew influenced. I tried to make it more my own by the tagline, introducing the monster in charecters, and adding just the best line, not my favorite. I will check those other sites out though.

[Dolph Lundgren]

Hey Evan, great job for a first time review, and I can see why hanging around here has caused you to adapt a style similar to Andrew's.  But like Freep says, your review(s) will only get better if you add your own stylistic touches to it.  I'm hardly a movie reviewer, so take my advice for what it's worth (not much).  Keep up the good work though.

Nick