Meltdown: Days of Destruction (2006)

Purely Joyful Movie!

Pretty Good

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Once again, Vancouver -- The king of schlocky Canadian 'made for TV' movies has done it again. Yet another movie made as a tax write-off for wealthy or semi-wealthy investors. Gotta hide that money somewhere, eh fat cats? As for the movie; It was made to be bad and to lose money (for tax loss purposes) and on that level I applaud it. It's certainly a terrible movie and I have to hand it to the producers -- they accomplished everything they set out to make; a terrible money-losing movie. Bravo! Well done!---------------------------------The British Columbia Production Services Tax Credit (PSTC) encourages film, television and animation production in BC and is available to either international or Canadian productions produced in British Columbia.There are four components:The basic PSTC tax credit is 33% of qualified BC labour expenditures incurred after February 28, 2010.The REGIONAL tax credit is 6% of qualified BC labour expenditures of the corporation pro-rated by the number of days of principal photography in BC outside of the designated Vancouver area to the total days of principal photography in BC. The new DISTANT Location tax credit is 6% and is added to the regional tax credit for principal photography done outside of the Lower Mainland Region, north of Whistler and east of Hope, excluding the Capital Regional District. DIGITAL ANIMATION or VISUAL EFFECTS tax credit is 17.5% of BC labour expenditures directly attributable to digital animation or visual effects activities.

Despite scientist Nathan's warnings, his boss continues an experiment meant as publicity for his satellite firm: exploding an asteroid. Instead it splits, and the major piece, the size of Iceland, changes course to earth. It is deflected but so close that it shift our course closer to the sun, causing rapid extreme heating, hopefully only mid-term. Nathan warns his sister, TV journalist Carly, and she her lover, police detective Tom. He brings his unruly daughter Kim, her ex-con lover C.J. and her mother, nurse Bonnie, when Nathan offers a flight to a friend's Arctic weather station. Tom takes charge of a dangerous trip to the airport, as everywhere on earth things catch fire and people fight for water, transport and sheer looting.....fantastically bad from the beginning, Van Dien shows his shirt no mercy as he spends the duration of the film sweating and looking a little concerned in some scenes. it's highly unbelievable that this guy could have a family, let alone trying to bring it together, but he does.as the heat rises, we see the group walk very slowly, meeting people and getting into scrapes. This carries on for the whole film.Van Diens daughter has to be as unlucky as Kim Bauer, because she has a gun to her head a couple of times, nearly gets blown up, and faints at the badness of it all.if this had an amazing budget, big stars (no offence to the cast here) and Bay at the helm, this could have been a fun popcorn blockbuster.Instead we get one dimensional villains, extras who appear to be asleep on the floor, and a literal mad scientist.But it's awful in a laughable sort of way.

MELTDOWN is pretty interesting SCI-FI. No major budget, very few special effects; but decent acting and a storyline of global doom is enough to sustain viewing. An asteroid grazes the atmosphere and thrust the Earth into an orbit closer to the sun. Global warming rapidly becomes unbearable. A determined LAPD cop(Casper Van Dien)goes all out to save the world from certain annihilation as the rising temps are devastating. The pressure is on to save mankind from this solar catastrophe; as well as protect his daughter, nurse ex-wife and TV reporter girlfriend. The cast includes: Stefanie Von Pfetten, Venus Terzo, Amanda Crew and Vincent Gale.

Meltdown opens on a scene of scientists preparing to conduct an important test on a missile system developed to deflect asteroids should they be on a collision course with earth. Nathan (Vincent Gale) mentions some misgivings to his, but the test appears to be an unqualified success. Then the asteroid breaks apart, and the largest piece is pushed into a direct collision path with earth. Fortunately, the huge rock skips off of earth's outer atmosphere and ricochets into space. Unfortunately, the glancing blow is just enough to alter earth's orbit, and the planet begins to spiral closer to the sun.While all of this is going on above their heads, Los Angeles cops Tom (Casper Van Dien) and Mick (Greg Anderson) are on a stake-out. They're supposed to collect evidence against a suspected drug dealer, but the deal they're watching quickly devolves into a shooting match. Afterward, Tom takes a few minutes to be interviewed by a local television reporter who also happens to be his girlfriend, Carly (Stefanie von Pfetten).At a nearby hospital where Mick is treated for a minor injury, Tom has a brief chat with his ex-girlfriend Bonnie (Venus Terzo), who is a nurse. He tells her he's concerned about the fact that their 17 year-old daughter Kimberly (Amanda Crew) is dating a man named CJ (Ryan McDonell). Once Tom explains to Bonnie that he's discovered CJ has a criminal record, she's a little worried herself.It's not long, however, before everybody has something else to worry about. The temperature is rapidly rising all around the world. Carly is one of the first non-scientists to learn what's really happening. Nathan, who is her brother, calls her to say he may have a way that they can survive. Carly calls Tom; he, of course, promptly contacts Bonnie.In relatively short order, the motley group is on the road. Before they can reach their ultimate goal, however, they've got to make their way through bands of looters, deal with a catastrophic water shortage, and manage to travel in temperatures that are high enough to kill.Casper Van Dien is a good looking guy, and I actually enjoyed him in Starship Troopers. That may be because he's good in action scenes. It might also be because he didn't talk much in that movie. In Meltdown, he's unfortunately given just enough lines in situations that are just dramatic enough to showcase his entirely average acting abilities. Amanda Crew is also okay, and Ryan McDonell isn't bad, either. Vincent Gale and Stefanie von Pfetten are also both reasonably good, but Venus Terzo is sadly on a par with Van Dien.What really makes or breaks a movie, though, is the story and the script. While the story here is okay and actually has some real potential, the script is just awful. The science part of the science fiction is non-existent starting with the asteroid pushing the earth out of orbit and escalating with the notion that the "gravitational balance of the solar system" might "pull the earth back" into its usual orbit "over time." When the temperature in LA hits 120 degrees, cars start blowing up.You know what's even worse than the bad science? The bad continuity. Okay, really hot. Why are people in the movie not only wearing long sleeved shirts, but jackets, too? Why are people mugging each other for bottled water instead of turning on the taps at home? Why are the streets completely empty, but the freeways completely full? And why are the freeways full of unexploded? It's almost superfluous to note that the sets, costumes, and production values were good, especially when that only forces me to say that the edits were not.So basically, you take a pretty good story idea and combine it with mostly mediocre acting, a terrible script, low-end special effects, utterly irrational plot twists, and poor edits, and what do you have? A movie that's even less than the sum of its inconsiderable parts. I'm sorry to say that I can't recommend Meltdown: Days of Destruction to anyone.POLITICAL NOTES: There is mention here that Congress finally loosened the purse strings enough to fund the tests that start the movie rolling. While the tests here were wholly irresponsible (targeting an asteroid with a nuke and not knowing the composition of the big rock is, in fact, well beyond irresponsible and approaching the insane), the fact is that such scenarios are a very real danger to the planet. Unfortunately, we've tracked nowhere near all of the near earth asteroids that could be worrisome in some orbit some day; and our ability to spot something on a collision course with us is limited at best.Once we do discover we're going to be hit, we quite literally have no system in place to deal with it. There are no nuclear-tipped space missiles we can launch; the space shuttle is completely incapable of going beyond earth orbit, and if it were, we couldn't launch enough of them or launch them quickly enough for it to matter. I'm not big on the government doing anything beyond its constitutional mandates, but I certainly think protecting the planet from destruction coming at us from outer space could be construed as defending the country, don't you? FAMILY SUITABILITY: Meltdown: Days of Destruction is rated R for "some violence." I frankly didn't find the violence here anything beyond a fairly typical T-rated video game. If your teens are keen on seeing Meltdown and you can't talk them out of it, the R-rating shouldn't dissuade you from letting them see it. It's not, however, a good idea to leave the younger kids in the room with their elder siblings. While the shootings aren't too graphic in the main, some of the dead bodies are.