L.A. gets nuked in this Final Solution to the Problem of Traffic and Urban Sprawl in Southern California. Most of the other reviewers of this turkey have given it the pan it deserves, but this is the kind of film that just invites more comments. I grew up in L.A. and left more than 20 years ago, and with every visit back, I grow to hate what it has become more and more. This film was probably thought up by some disgruntled New Yorker who moved out to L.A. and is stuck there and wants revenge. It's a direct-to-video attempt to capitalize on the latest string of planetary catastrophe movies. It may fool you because despite its low budget, it starts out looking like a real movie: Its production values and musical score are actually quite respectable. However, the plot is based on a ridiculous premise and feels like something that was banged out in a 30-second story conference. There is some kind of complication involving nuclear testing that results in a shift of the tectonic plate that runs through Southern California (the plate boundary is the San Andreas Fault). If the plate displacement reaches 44 centimeters, boom! Global catastrophe as the molten mantle spews out and causes a great mass extinction, including all human life. How to stop the plate displacement? Why, a little old 15-megaton nuclear explosion or two right in the middle of the L.A. basin. A seismologist I'm not, but what little I know about plate tectonics tells me that the forces driving the plates are such as to defy any merely human intervention. Why is the film set in L.A.? So that the filmmakers don't have to leave town but can use L.A. locations for the shoot. One laughable premise is followed by another when the feds order the evacuation of Los Angeles, and we're asked to believe that the local and national authorities can 1) actually carry this out, and 2) do it in just a couple of days. Then there is a race against time to place the nukes and detonate them while dealing with stock villains, irrelevant and contrived side-stories about family squabbles, impossible coincidences, and implausible crises.
Let's not ignore the cast, which consists largely of third-rate B-movie regulars who don't exactly light up the screen. Mark Dacascos, who appears to be a cheap imitation Bruce Lee, has little or no screen charisma as the male lead; ditto for Tamara Davies as the female lead: She is beautiful but not much of an actress. Ditto for most of the rest of the case. Two very good foreign-born actors, Rutger Hauer and John Rhys-Davies, are completely wasted in their roles: Hilariously, the Dutchman Hauer plays the U.S. president (!), and Rhys-Davies plays a scientist who is essentially a reprise of the role of Maximillian Arturo that he played in the series 'Sliders.' The excellent and under-appreciated Mark Rolston, who has the misfortune to have been born with a face that invites type-casting as an evil guy, looks so bored and unhappy in his stereotypical role as the evil FBI agent with the hidden agenda that it's actually distracting.
This movie is strictly desperation time for insomniacs. Turn it off, take a sleeping pill and go back to bed.
Scorcher
2002
Action / Adventure / Drama / Sci-Fi / Thriller
Scorcher
2002
Action / Adventure / Drama / Sci-Fi / Thriller
Plot summary
The only hope for humanity to survive a natural disaster is to detonate a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
September 06, 2018 at 04:28 AM
Director
Top cast
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L.A. finally gets it but you won't care
Genric b-movie action disaster flick
If you take yourself way too seriously like the last reviewer, then you will probably also take this film way too seriously. It's quick paced action B-movie, with a basic plot and some great casting. Rutger Hauer as President--Excellent!
This is a popcorn movie. A don't think about it movie. It has no budget and an obvious plot, but what more do you want on a Saturday afternoon? When it comes down to it, it's a DISASTER movie, and they are all basically the same. If you don't like this genre, don't watch the movie.
And since the fire in the tunnel was a flash fire, a quick burning flame that passed through the tunnel--surviving in the trunk is possible. The trunk would not have heated up enough to overheat her. and besides it's a movie. Don't take it so seriously and you might enjoy yourself.
The brink of disaster, time running out...
On the brink of disaster, with time running out, the fate of the world rests in the determined hands of a crack military unit, and a scientist with a plan that's risky, but just might save the world.
The soldiers are led by a handsome young colonel, whose daughter has been hijacked by a madman. Thrown in for sexual tension, and a woman's touch, is the scientist's daughter, reknowned in her own right, but with a chip on her shoulder because she thinks her father cared more for science than for her. Rutger Hauer, as the President of the United States, wrings his hands and worries with real flair.
This is strictly formula, the same you've seen in "Deep Impact", "The Core", and "Armagaeddon" (and those are the variations just from the last few years). This is a largely unknown cast, less John Rhys-Davies, Rutger Hauer, and the actor who played "Zale" on TV's M*A*S*H.
The story is stale, but still this is not an awful film; the actors turn in, in my opinion, as good a performance as could be derived from the material. If you're like me, and you're faced with a choice between re-runs of "Full House" and "Scorched" at 2 o'clock in the morning, pick this film. The nuclear annihilation of Los Angeles has got to be more entertaining than those horrible twin girls!