Life on the Line

Watched this tonight - Watt a treat, its absolutely shocking, electrifying and keeps pylon on the suspense, it really amps up towards the end, and manages to fuse and splice current day tech with raw acting power, if you want a film that makes you go "ohm my god" you cant do better than this John Tra-volt-a charged joule of a movie. This really sparks the imagination and overloads the senses, worth the watch. Follow it up by watching the new program on the documentary channel about power workers searching the top floor of abandoned power stations for old valuables - Cash in the static.

This film tells the story of a foreman of an electricity company in the United States, who is diligent and careful with his job of supervising a group of linesman. The power grid is under threat when a massive storm strikes.

Seeing that this film has John Travolta and went straight to video in some countries, I had low expectations. It actually turned out to be way better than I thought. The story follows him and his niece, who experiences romantic troubles on the small town, where most people seem to work for the same electricity company. The story is engaging and draws me into their world, especially Kate Bosworth's character. I liked the ending too, and I didn't realise that there is an association to help the people who died while servicing power grids. I think this film raises awareness on the grave and try under-recognised dangers of working with the power grid. These workers deserve more appreciation and recognition for their risky job.

John Travolta is a line man, one of those guys you see in a hard helmet and red vest on power lines, doing something dangerous and obscure.... and the power running. Lives depend on that power, and he's got s pregnant niece, her boyfriend as his new, unobservant apprentice, and a storm on the way.

Watching this attempt to mythologize another form of Texas Hard Man in the aftermath of at least 86 Texans dying because their power grid went out last month.... well it interferes with the impulse; it's hard to print the legend with the facts still fresh in your mind. It's also startling to hear Travolta with a twang overlaying his usual accent, but to my untutored ears, he's pretty good, his face buried under a beard. If's a good updating of the standard western tropes. Perhaps when this year's events have faded, it will seem better.

I was so looking forward to this film which is classified as an action/drama film. Mrs. Shullivan and I both worked for the local utility company and we are aware that the risk these lineman (line persons) take working on high voltage systems is real, is extremely dangerous and has led to some unfortunate and untimely deaths.

Life on the Line seems to portray all the lineman in this film as having personal demons, a group of hard drinking brothers, who appear to be standing in line waiting to get themselves killed in the line of duty. Even worse than the depressed characters of the main stars of this feature film were all the clichés that were used so often that I started gagging on my popcorn.

The film did hold my attention for the first half, but as more and more clichés were expressed by the so-called heroes, and the irritating caption at the bottom of the screen kept appearing with the countdown days to the day of the big storm, you had to know someone was going to lose their "Life on the Line" eh?

So the storm comes in more than just by the usual way (no spoiler here) and we see how when a life is lost a new generation of potential line persons are born. I don't think we have to worry about seeing a sequel to this film. Lights out....nothing more to report.

Besides the fact that as a movie, it was barely okish, I didn't realize that was Sharon Stone so I'll either give her kudos on the makeup job, or not blame her for hiding behind it, and knocking off the paycheck work. I don't even blame Travolta, he actually gave a sincere performance, given what he had to work with. The real issue here was in the writing, direction and edit. I just didn't buy any of it. The bar swilling, fist fighting, ol' boys approach to the film was overdone to the max. I don't need to be told a real linemen life (or any profession) is not actually like that, so why lie to me?

What I did appreciate was the lineman commenting here on the inaccuracies of the line work being done in the film. Like most, I know nothing about the details of their work, but I knew ... I just knew as I was watching, that Hollywood had it wrong here, and made it as sensational as they possibly could. A whole cities power supply resting on one switch? Do ya think I'm an idiot? And apparently it wouldn't have worked like that anyway says a lineman.

When will movie makers realize that its not wrong to actually portray someones job correctly, make sure they get the details right and let go of the need to push beyond reality to the point of reckless? The problem is I don't lose trust in the actors, I lose trust in the system that simply cant understand what I really want in a movie.