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Atomic Train (1999)
My condolences to the actors involved
In all honesty, I have to express my sympathies to Lowe, Davis, Morales, Suvari, and all the others involved in this cinematic debacle--either the paychecks just weren't rolling in, or they were conned into thinking this script had potential. I just saw it on TV, and I would have laughed a LOT, had it just not been so tragic and head-shakingly bad.
I'm an actor and director, so I can speak to the quality of their performances, which were very good, considering the material they were given and the direction and production values and hideously implausible script. I would have loved to see more conflict between Lowe and Morales, and I could tell they were itching to inject it into their performances, but the script and production prevented any meaningful characterizations from coming out.
I'm also a moderate geek, so I can state some disputes with the story which destroyed my suspension of disbelief from the first moment of the film. Buses don't move and stop that quickly. Trains don't zip along that fast without camera tricks. Air brakes, of the kind used on every train and commercial tractor-trailer vehicle in existence, by design, lock up tight as a drum when air pressure is lost. And these are all within the first few minutes. I lost track of all the technical non-sequiturs and outright lousy whiskey-tango-foxtrot moments early on, and came to the conclusion that the writers and producers had but a nodding acquaintance with reality and know no fact-checkers. I won't even get into the fact that no one of our erstwhile heroes should have been left alive after around the halfway point.
Why the writers chose to make this flick run as long as it did...the mind lacks the courage to boggle. There's no legitimate climax to the film. What should have been the climax, the obvious 'boom', was reduced to a simple complication in the tale. from there, it was up-and-down rising action and denouement, leaving no fulfillment, only a feeling through the last third of the film of, "Dear God in Heaven, isn't this bloody thing over YET!?" No satisfaction from the resolution, no standout performances, no tour-de-force effects work (it was serviceable to the story...and that ain't a compliment), no plausibility, only a numbness and a feeling of having lost several hours, possibly an entire day, to a script that never should have gotten the green light.
Thank heavens the marquis names have moved on to bigger and better projects and made names for themselves, so they can say that they've all dodged the career-killing Atomic Train bullet.
Atomic Twister (2002)
"Plan Nine from Three Mile Island"
This is the first feedback I've written for a movie here. I'm writing this as the movie is playing behind me on television. I'm watching this and cringing with horror.
The horror comes from the fact that someone actually greenlighted this production.
The plot is contrived beyond belief. The script and dialogue is devoid of all sense and wit and emotional context. The director (I haven't looked yet) must be somebody's favorite nephew. The acting...I've seen Sharon Lawrence and Mark-Paul Gosselar turn in award worthy performances before. This makes me wonder what kind of bets they lost to do this schlock. Calling the performances wooden would be an insult to wood. I'm an actor. I've learned how to tell what's what behind performances on stage and screen, and this...is just bad. Acting without braincells or the least dramaturgical sense. The scenery and settings are as contrived and poorly assembled as the directorial staff and the miscast cast. The music is servicable but hokey at the same time, pretty much thrown together by some guy in a basement studio with a synth. Gosselar should stick with romantic leads and the occasional character part--he is no action hero. Lawrence--needs a better agent. They all need better direction.
In all fairness, I'll give props to the editors because it looked like they tried to make a silk purse out of the sow's ear's worth of footage they had to work with. Good effort, guys, but didn't quite make it.
Compliments to the wardrobe people for Sharon's attention-getting low-cut white tank-top. At least the costumers knew the only marketable attributes of this movie.
The more I watch, the more I shake my head. This. Is. So. Contrived.
How this can make it to the air, and things like Firefly (7:00pm CST Friday, FOX) can get cancelled is utterly beyond me. Hollywood has zero sense left.
Lots of people lost lots of bets to get this movie made.