Chill Factor

I loved this movie. Of course, I like any movie that is packed with action, but is not so serious, that your depressed halfway through the movie. This movie portrayed a pair of undesirables stuck together in a, "wrong place at the wrong time" kind of situation which made them into heros.

Is this realistic? Absolutely not! But was it entertaining? Most definitely! The humor in this movie is what made it good. If they had tried to make this into some kind of serious drama, it probably would have flopped. Thankfully they didn't try that. This movie gets an A+ from me.

A scientist (David Paymer) develops a biological lethal weapon and accidentally kills eighteen soldiers in an island during the tests. Colonel Andrew Brynner (Peter Firth) is the commander and becomes the scapegoat of the incident. He is sentenced to go to the prison for ten years. Along this period, he becomes unbalanced and decides to get the bomb to sell to terrorists. He commands a group of mercenaries to steal the bomb from the base where Dr. Richard Long is researching. He shots the scientist but he flees with the weapon to the convenience store where the clerk Tim Mason (Skeet Ulrich) and an ice-cream trucker driver Arlo(Cuba Gooding Jr.) are negotiating. Mason receive this weapon from the injured Dr. Richard Long, with an advice to keep it below 50 F. they try to reach a military fort and try to escape from the colonel's team that is hunting them down.

"Chill Factor" is not a bad film; indeed it is slightly above average for this type of action movie. There are some terrible cuts of the scenes in the edition and the egocentric Arlo is annoying most of the time. The deceptive conclusion makes this film forgettable. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Suando Frio" ("Sweating Cold")

Note: On 02 October 2015, I saw this film again.

This one sucked. I mean, I can see the appeal of a plain-jane action movie, but this one has been coughed up from the phlegmatic lungs of hundreds of other action movies. Every single damned line in the whole thing was a big cliche. For God's sake, Cuba Gooding, Jr. at one point says, "When this is over, remind me to kick your ass." Raise your hands if you've heard that one before. Skeet Ulrich, I liked. Cuba Gooding, Jr., I didn't. The only line he delivers that I liked was the same one that everyone has heard a hundred times in the advertisements, so, I was ready for it. AVOID.

Good action flick about regular guys turned defenders of the American people. Cuba Gooding is great as an excitable type, while Skeet Ulrich is the cool one. Once the story is set up, the action is non stop with a lot of "Edge of your seat" scenes. Cuba & Skeet deliver some good comedy lines to take a bit of the edge off the intensity of this film. Their relationship as friends grows throughout the movie so it gives you a good feeling & brings some believability to how they react to each other in tough situations. If you like fast, hard hitting action with a bit of humor thrown in, this movie is for you!

I'm no snob who only loves foreign movies and turns his nose at mainstream entertainment - in fact, I am quite forgiving for genre films, and I enjoy a lot of B movies as well. However, this major Hollywood is just as bad as many of the worst B films. Despite a respectable budget, the movie looks quite cheap, sometimes embarrassingly so, like when you see a guide cable hooked to the boat, or when you see that a major highway up a mountain is A DIRT ROAD (?!) The protagonists are annoying little jerks, and you feel sorry for Gooding for playing a foul-mouthed stereotyped hustler. In fact, the chief antagonist is more sympathetic than they are! There's also not that much action, and what there is has been filmed a la "Speed 2" (jiggily camera close-up).

Even if it's free on TV and you're feeling undemanding, you'll feel as frustrated as I felt at the end.