Category 6: Day of Destruction (2004)

Admirable film.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

When you're halfway through a disaster movie and you find yourself rooting for the disaster, then you know that something's gone wrong. As usual for these types of movies I found myself hoping that all the lead characters would just die, the sooner the better. The only person I liked was the cranky artist who gets stuck in a lift. Other than that it's just a bunch of walking clichés that should have been shot at the earliest opportunity.Not only are the characters the usual clichés - whiny teenagers who fall apart at the first sign of trouble, the evil corporation bosses who prize money over safety, the old, exhausted boss due to retire who knows everything and the bureaucratic idiot replacement, the pilot hero who can keep flying for 150 hours straight, the dogged reporter, the bonkers hacker - but the plot holes are big enough to sink Chicago in. And, of course, nobody does anything logical.A huge plot point is that the power goes out in Chicago, and then there's a huge effort to bring the power back online, and then the 'hacker' who took the power out tries to bring the power back online, again. However, he seems to have no ability to see that the power is already on? Why? Don't bother looking for an explanation, there isn't one. So the power goes out, then it's on briefly, and then it's out again - because power plus power equals zero. So there's no power, except when a protagonist HAS to make a vital phone call, or when a siren HAS to go off on top of a building, or a computer connection has to be made, ...The movie looks like it had a decent enough budget, or there's warehouse in America with over a hundred hours of disaster footage. Sadly, the budget wasn't spent on a decent script, or better actors. A lot of lines felt as though they were place markers until a better line was created. Sadly, the better lines never turned up. Were the actors any good? Can't tell as there was no need for anyone to act, they just had to deliver awful lines with wooden faces.Why can't people make a disaster films and concentrate on a single storyline? Instead, you have dozens of sub-plots, side-plots, wasted-plots, irrelevant-plots, and go-nowhere-plots that just fill in the time between the opening and closing credits. This film is like an elongated episode in a naff soap opera. If you find that you can keep up with who all the characters are and what their issues are, then you've watched too much daytime soaps and need to get a life.As a cure for insomnia this is an excellent movie. That's about the only useful thing this film is good for.

CATEGORY 6 can readily be summed up by pointing out that it was shot in Canada, although it is set in Chicago. An aging Brian Dennehy leads a huge cast in this badly made disaster flick as huge storms head for Chicago and a hacker brings Chi-town to its knees, power-wise. Dennehy is OK even though he is clearly just collecting a paycheck. Thomas Gibson of "Criminal Minds" mumbles his way through as the TV movie's secondary lead. And Randy Quaid plays a colorful tornado chaser who is a near-duplicate of his character in "Independence Day." The film is talky and tedious, and the effects are on a high school level. There's even stock footage that doesn't match particularly well with the locale (palm trees, anyone?) I managed to sit through most of this before finally giving up.

If you thought Day after tomorrow was implausible, wait till you see this.Okay so the premise of most disaster films is usually a 1 in billion event occurring, compounded by other circumstances. In this case, the even is the joining of two huge storm systems. Fair enough so far. Oh but hold up, no, the "event" is the sabotage and subsequent destruction of the power grid.Next throw in loads of human interest elements - in this case a cheating husband, a psychotic gun-wielding boyfriend, a rebellious daughter, a hacker with a point to prove, a senator trying to push an agenda, a reporter trying to stand up against "the man", and a pregnant women stuck in an elevator.Finally add a handful of taster events to add excitement.Jeez if the director tried to fit in any more meaningless plot lines, there would have been no time less for the actual disaster, which, given the pitiful state of the computer graphics, was almost certainly the intention.Jeez, if you can't even model a truck convincingly, you really should not be taking on twisters, exploding power stations, Las Vegas getting ripped apart, or destroyed oil stations.In case you didn't already gather how appalling this movie is, let me just add that all three bad guys get killed in separate, and wholly ungratifying, implausible manners, that stunk more of moralising that good film-making.I'm have no problem with first month film students writing jaded, hackneyed, cliché-soaked scripts, but for god's sake, that doesn't mean anyone has to make them into movies!It manages to make the abysmally implausible 10.0 Apocalypse look not quite so dreadful. Avoid them both.

Probably as I was watching it in bed, with a cold, I appreciated it more than most! However, I think various criticisms were warranted, as I was attracted to the TV movie watched from a hire DVD, I could stop it when I wanted.I was attracted to hire it because of Brian Dennehy, and dear old Randy Quaid. Personally I thought that Brian's performance appeared subdued, in my opinion. And he looked old and cynical. And Randy was Randy, and didn't disappoint. I mean the computer systems analyst, well, that was a bit hard to take. "He meant well..?" As entertainment value, I thought it was OK. Plenty of sub plots, and special effects were OK. But it ended without it really explaining to my opinion, certain weather facts, other than electricity is a very important factor in our lives whether breakdowns can become disasters in themselves without the weather adding to it. Little bit of politics there in my opinion influencing the plot as such. What would happen to all the animals for instance, or pets? The birds flying away gave some hint to this side of any tragedy or disaster. What happened to Typhoon Randy Quaid, and his film of it, that he released into the storm? I see he stars again in Category 7, End of The World? No I felt it deserved a better score than it got for just entertainment value alone. But as I said, I could pause it when I felt like it. But if you are searching for reality or credibility in any Sci-Fi or any disaster movie unless it is based or inspired by a true or actual event, then you may always query the credibility in a plot?