I have always been a bit of a sucker for disaster movies but there’s really not many around these days. So when the Blu-ray for this one popped up on my radar I decided to give it a go. I was a bit hesitant since it was Chinese but I have quite enjoyed some movies from “unusual” countries, like Bãhubali from India so I thought I would give this one a shot. The sure as hell have enough money to pour into their film industry after all.
Boy was I wrong. The bullshit on the Blu-ray packaging claims it is made by the same people that made Tomb Raider and The Expendables 2. If that is true I don’t think they had much say in the production. The probably just loaned their names to it. Hollywood has a habit of selling out to China nowadays after all.
The acting is absolutely abysmal. Not only from the main actors but I wonder if they even bothered to instruct the extras as to what they were supposed to do or just told them run around like idiots.
The plot is more or less recycled. I was expecting that but I was hoping for some small piece originality but no.
Some stunts are just nonsensical. Jumping between cable cars like five meters apart? I guess those tourists where professional athletes. You cannot drive that fast backwards. Apart from not really being humanly possible to control the car the transmission will simply not allow it. Apparently surveillance drones in China are capable of blowing up entire water stations. Then we have the obligatory scene where someone floats around on something, in this case a car, on flowing magma. Magma is between 700 and 1300 degrees hot. You do not float around on it without getting carbonized for fuck sake.
Also, why did that water station have a really modern control room with control panels except that the one switch our amateur heroes just happened to have to flick was a huge bloody lever a’ la Flash Gordon in the middle of the machine room?
I did not have high hopes for this movie really but I though I could at least enjoy the special effects. Not even those measured up. A few where decent but most of them where mediocre at best and some really bad.
Overall the film was so bad that I just couldn’t watch it without trying to find something else to do so I opened my laptop and wrote this review while watching it.
Well, that was a waste of my time indeed. No more Chinese movies for me for a while. They certainly do not have the staying power of their viruses.
