Solar Crisis (1990)

[Neville]

Man, this film REALLY has a bad rep. Apparently it was made as a co-production between American and Japanese investors for 50 million dollars, and then shelved. A strange fate for a film that has some neat FX and a cast full of names like Charlton Heston and Jack Palance, who play supporting roles.

I saw this one back in the 90s on TV, though it was bad but had its moments. I saw it again this afternoon as a sort of "hats off to Charlton Heston" thing, and pretty much arrived at the same conclusion than in the 90s about its quality.

The movie is about the near future, when solar eruptions have (apparently, it is mostly expressed through TV broadcasts) caused a great deal of damage to western society. A solar flame bigger than the previous ones is expected soon, so the NASA is launching a mission to detonate a nuclear device inside the sun. Meanwhile, the son of the mission commander is lost somewhere near the desert, in a world that resembles, I don't know, part "Mad Max" and part the weirdest moments of "Vanishing Point". Oh, yeah, and there's some big businesman that wants to sabotage the mission, because he doesn't believe in science or something.

Alright, where to start? The whole big businessman scenario doesn't make much sense. But then, it doesn't need to. His motivations maybe extremely weak at the logical level, but he is nevertheless quite scary. Bad dialogue apart, he may just want to stop the mission because he can, and that's enough. To give credit where credit is due, the whole thing could have ended as rather laughable, but it's sort of creepy instead.

The lost son story is a bit better. It allows director Richard Sarafian (yep, the one who made "Vanishing Point"... but also "Eye of the tiger") to show how society underr the sun eruptions has evolved, and to introduce a welcome dose of comedy and human warmth with the presence of Jack Palance, who plays a hobo who takes the kid under his wing, and Heston, who plays the kid's grandpa. Corin Nemec, as the son, also does well, considering how little he was given to work with.

And finally there's the space thing. Here's the part of the movie that really should work, but it only does sporadically. Dialogue is tepid and is recited by all actors with the energy of a Shakespeare school play, and most of the scenes are in rather uninspired interior sets. But then, when sabotages start taking place and Annabel Schofield is done something else than showing her breasts (not that I mind, they're very remarkable) things get livelier. And the ending, with FX imagery replicating what the insides of the sun may look like, it's absolutely wonderful.

So, in the end, it's a mixed bag. Generally speaking, it's a rather flat film, but the occasional cheesy or inspired moments make it more or less worthy. Cheese? Yeah, well, the film has a moment in which a robotic police truck talks to a buffalo. Really. And it also has a scene in which a scientist states that if the Earth's surface turns into lava, 90% of mankind will die. I really need to use all my wits to understand how the remaining 10% could live in a planet of molten lava, but you know the drill, never question science in bad movies.   

[Ometiklan]

This one really hurt!

Sunshine was roughly 100% better!

[Yaddo 42]

I haven't seen it in years, I remember liking the visuals but finding the plot to be nonsense and the acting pretty bad also.

I can remember seeing this film being discussed on Entertainment Tonight years ago, being excited for it's release (I was a sucker for anything space opera-ish), then not hearing anything until it turned up at my local video store. I don't think they ever even stocked it in the new releases, just put it in the adventure/scifi section even when it was new.

One thing that did annoy me was an exterior shot of either part of the ship's bridge or elese the space command HQ on Earth was just recycled footage from the Scott Glenn/Toshiro Mifune action flick The Last Challenge. Just made the film look cheap.