Flood: A River's Rampage

FLOOD: A RIVER'S RAMPAGE is yet another in the long line of TV-made disaster movies that attempt to emulate the biggies on a much smaller scale and budget. This one stars a slumming-it Richard Thomas as the archetypal nice guy who has to step in when the Mississippi bursts its banks and floods a small town.

The plot has two strands that alternate and sometimes join together. First, there's the usual town-must-pull-together type stuff, which is all pretty bad and uninteresting; there are only so many scenes of people building a wall of sandbags that you can take, and the rest of the special effects are virtually nil. The second plot strand involves a stubborn family who refuse to move out of their home, with inevitable results.

There's some cheesy acting to be enjoyed here, along with a solid siege scenario - instead of defending their farmhouse from zombies or birds or killer bees, it's rising water - although by the very nature of it it's all over rather quickly. Thomas is uninteresting as is the rest of the cast and it's all by the numbers, but believe me, there is plenty worse in this genre...

I love catastrophic films, especially when they involve the end of the world and climatic events, here one of the best scenes, which caused me the most anguish was in the girl's slowness in rescuing the little child, her sister and the elderly her desperate grandfather, the escape scene on the roof it reminded me of the wonderful "Predator Assassins", probably based on this, weak drama, but the river scenes save.

During the 1993 floods along the Mississippi, a woman engineer returns to her home town and inspires its inhabitants to fight to save it from being engulfed by the river. This involves her in working closely with a former boyfriend. A conventional but well-produced drama, with nice performances from Thomas and Vernon.

The story: Constant raining is causing the Mississippi river to rise faster and higher than it ever has before. A female engineer is assigned to a small town to build a levy to protect most of the town. We find out she was once 'engaged' to Herb, a local farmer who helps rally the townsfolk to build the levy. As the movie progresses we discover that the estimations made by the higher ranking engineers are wrong. I think their estimates increase about 3 or 4 times throughout the film, just so we can have more footage of people sandbagging.

This is by no means brilliant! It's not even really good! Or good! This is just an average 'made for TV' film. I am actually watching 'Flood: A River's Rampage' as I am typing this. This is about the second time I have seen it and I am still not impressed and the only reason I have it on is because there's not much else on.

Anyway, the acting is poor on most parts. Harry Anderson (from Stephen King's 'IT') does a good job but the supporting cast should probably consider acting lessons. Not really much point to this production, especially the whole thing with the grandfather on top of the house. All the footage of Herb's (Harry Anderson) children is rubbish. Neither of the girls playing his children are convincing in their roles.

All in all, if there's nothing else on then do something other than watch this. If you have nothing else to do (like me just now) stick it on and you can keep yourself amused at this poor production.

4/10

As always, Cat §quire