Polar Storm (2009)

People are voting emotionally.

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Daddy's a hero, mum is a screaming lady, son has a bad haircut. Of course, there's a black president of the USA. A lots of scientists are repeating "Oh my god!". But wait, the Russian submarine is coming to help!!! What else is there? Action scenes are ruined by the bad CGI. And some of the actors don't even know how to play dead. I don't know if there is a quota how many disaster movies SyFy channel must release in one year, but their every movie is awful. Same predictable and ridiculous scripts, same lousy acting, same low-budget CGI, and, of course, pretty same happy end. Sometimes it seems to me that they didn't have enough money to make a TV show, so they put it all into 90 minutes TV movie.

The magnetic polars are disturbed and realigned with the result that there is much death and destruction as mankind tries to solve the problem.Not particularly good science fiction film might have worked had their been more money and some better people before and behind the camera. The first problem with the film is that the special effects aren't special. I'm all for the suspension of disbelief but there is a point where it becomes much too hard to disbelieve. Almost every effect in the film is computer generated and since there are so many I don't think the effects crew had any amount of time to do them properly. One or twice or now and again you might have been able to forgive it but the scenes of epic destruction is just asking too much. On the plus side its so bad it distracts you from the uneven performances and the plot holes you could drive a comet through.Clearly I'm at the negative polar on this film and think you should pass.

Shown tonight under the title SOLAR STORM, this turned out to be a really good little movie. Sci-Fi is famous (infamous?) for taking really good story ideas and turning them into disappointing movies that can't deliver on their promise.SOLAR STORM is primarily set in a pleasant small town in Washington State (played, of course, by Canadian locations) where a famous scientist and his wife, who's a science teacher, and his teenage stepson live in harmony until the Earth's magnetic poles start doing really strange things.It seems that a big piece of a comet's tail hit the Earth in Alaska and did some serious damage. Then Dr. James Mayfield (played by Jack Coleman from the TV series "Heroes" discovers that the sun isn't setting in the place where it ought to.It seems that the earth has shifted on its axis and the poles are in the process of reversing. The last time that happened was about a million years ago, and if it happens now there will be no living thing on the planet.Director Paul Ziller has enough sense not to bite off more than he can chew. There are no detailed scenes of destruction in big cities with thousands of extras running in terror. He focuses the attention on the Mayfields and their town, and doesn't try to fake big budget special effects.What's done is done pretty well. And the performers are strong enough to keep up our interest. Since my daughter was writing a paper for a college class I watched using headphones, and the sound effects are very effective.Need I add that the authorities- including the President and Dr. Mayfield's father , General Mayfield (the two haven't spoken for five years)- want to ignore the call for alarm and calm the population that everything is all right? Would it surprise you that Mayfield's stepson is unhappy about his mother's remarriage (it's not mentioned specifically, but the boy's stepfather is about 24 years older than his wife)? This is not a work of original ideas. A little Armageddon, a touch of DEEP IMPACT, a possible solution to the problem that's borrowed from the very fine 1961 film THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE, and a rescue that comes courtesy of Jules Verne's JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH.There's even a little bit of subtext about parent/child relationships and the issue of whether to blindly trust authority or to trust your instincts.Good work, Sci-Fi Channel. Well done.

Decent acting and direction. The writing leaves something to be desired but is passable. The special effects were not all that bad.Jack Coleman from Heroes does a decent job of playing a scientist who figures out that the Earth is going through a pole shift due to a comet strike.*Spoiler* Some of the plot points were of course a tad silly. Mainly a diesel sub traveling from Alaska to the Marianas trench to deliver a nuke in less than 2 days. Not to mention some of the science.All in all a formulaic disaster movie touching on all the stereotypical elements. It is passable for entertainment as long as you do not take it too seriously.