Chill Factor

There's only one reason to watch "Chill Factor", and that's Peter Firth (Colonel Andrew Brynner) and his bunch of totally useless elite commandos / terrorists.

The plot is awful, the dialogue is terrible, and it makes you wince to think that Cuba Gooding Jnr once won an Oscar. However, this movie contains some of the most useless bad guys you've ever seen .

Laugh out loud as one chap abseils into the path of a moving van, whilst another rides his motorbike into the grill of an oncoming truck. Grab your sides as Peter Firth delivers line after line of hilarious empty threats, movie clichés, and, in some cases, complete and utter rubbish.

The movie lacks pace (apart from a nicely done initial disaster) and has no idea which genre it belongs to. Is it a bad action movie, a send up, or a comedy buddy movie? Who knows? What I do know is that Peter Firth realised he was making an absolute stinker of a movie and took the opportunity to ham-it-up to the max. He's a serious contender for worst movie bad guy ever, who clearly recruits his goons from the school for the seriously challenged.

Watch out for his numerous attempts to steal best movie leer from John Voight in Anaconda!

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.

The whole plot was tired and foolish, must of us know that. I myself happen to like cheesy and stupid action movies. Cuba was funny, as I thought he might be, even Skeet turned out to have slight humor in his bones. This is one of those movies where two guys hate each other at first, but end up becoming the best of pals. If you like dumb jokes, and asinine plots, you'll LOVE this movie!

Chill Factor left me a little cold. The contrivances of this film were at such a level that I was unable to suspend my disbelief. Unfortunate, because it boasts good acting talent. I got the feeling they had to shoot the film in a week, forcing the production team to take a machete to their basic "FORMULA" for a commercial action /thriller. Further compounding a fracture, they wasted the adroit talent of Hudson Leick. The film would have been more interesting had they expanded her role. It will be interesting to see how long it lasts at the box office.

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!