Customer Reviews

Solar Crisis

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This flick posits the world facing a doomsday solar flare in the near future. Tim Matheson leads a cast of boring action figures to the edge of the sun, where he will pilot a smaller spaceship into the sun while carrying an anti-matter bomb - what amounts to a suicide mission. (The science of solar flares theorizes that they form based on magnetic lines that work like rubber bands; the bomb will snap the lines and prevent the lethal flare from forming.) Meanwhile, Matheson's son escapes from his military school, and Matheson's disapproving father - Charlton Heston as an uptight career military man - sets out to find him. The flare is preceded by other solar phenomenon that's steaming up the earth (and interfering with anything that relies on basic principles of electromagnetism). While the mission must succeed for the sake of humanity, a sinister tycoon played by Peter Boyle is determined to sabotage it.

Nothing in this flick works - least of all why Boyle is set on sinking a mission that's clearly mankind's last hope (doubts over whether it may be worse than the flare or at least uneccessary seem to have been left out of the script). The plot about Matheson's son seems entirely uneccessary, even if it does allow for the obligatory showdown between Heston & Boyle. Lastly, what is the state of technology here? It looks like the near future (with concept versions of today's space and aircraft), but also with holograms and nearly sentient AI - embodied in a luscious fembot and the antimatter bomb's computer (voiced effectively by Paul Williams). "Crisis" rode the crest of early 1990's CGI (a path blazed by the new Trek show) in which then nifty effects made drama obsolete. Now its effects look dated, and the story remains as incomprehensible as before.

I saw this DVD on the shelf and thought "...wow, sci-fi...and look at the credits." Then I saw the actors...Charlton Heston, Tim Matheson...and the plot seemed somewhat plausible...for the future anyway, so I bought it. Then I watched it the first time, then a second, and a third. I came to the conclusion that this movie was composed entirely of what was on the cutting room floor. The plot was disjointed, the most of the characters were uninspired and unbelievable (especially Matheson who couldn't act his way out of a paper bag), and despite the great special effects (2001 was touted as a credit to the sfx crew) this turkey of a movie couldn't get off the ground...much less to the sun. I give it one because, as they say; 'zero wasn't an option'. If you buy it, play the sound track to 'Event Horizon'...it makes it so much more interesting.

It was the first time I ever felt a need to fast forward through a video and even then I couldn't stand to watch it. Fast forwarding through all the action on earth I was dumbfounded by the impossible plot on the space ship. Special effects or not, this movie is not worth paying for, I didn't - (checked it out of the local library).

Take a hint from the Director credit: Alan Smithee - the real director did not even want his name on it.

The world is facing imminent destruction and a suicide mission is sent to the Sun to avert catastrophe by firing a bomb into its fiery heart: no, it's not Sunshine, it's Solar Crisis, aka Crisis 2050, which burned up a huge chunk of change that's never apparent on screen back in 1990 and returned barely enough to buy a Happy Meal for each of the cast in Japan before going straight to video (remember them?) in the re-edited version presented here that's credited to one Alan Smithee. The plot hook's pretty much the same as Sunshine - suicide mission to the Sun, saboteur on board, logic cast adrift - except that this time they're not trying to reignite the sun but to prematurely detonate a solar flare before it can reach Earth. With a talking bomb. Voiced by Paul Williams. Who wants to be promoted so the crew will take him more seriously...

Given that the cast also includes Jack Palance at his most dementedly OTT, Charlton Heston at his most rigid, top-liner Tim Matheson at his most anonymous, the original Hills Have Eyes' unforgettable Michael Berryman (you may not remember the name, but you DO remember that face) and Peter Boyle as the industrialist out to sabotage the mission because, er, if it succeeds the world will be saved but his share price will go down, you'd expect if not a laugh-a-minute at least a laugh every reel. No joy. This is the worst kind of bad movie: a boring one. The fate of the world may be hanging in the balance but the whole film is shot with a complete lack of urgency or momentum at the same unvarying deadly slow pace. There's low-key and there's walking through it, but here the cast don't even do that. Instead, they just stand still looking at screens in near darkness for most of the time. You keep on hoping for Paul Williams' talking bomb to suffer an existential crisis, but instead the film just... stands there, doing next to nothing. Literally. This is one of the most inert movies ever made - so inert that if Clive Owen had been cast, he'd almost have looked lively by comparison. Even a poorly explained suicidal repair attempt fails to raise a fritter of interest since it mostly involves, yep, the cast just standing still looking at screens in near darkness. Even when the bomb prematurely goes into countdown before being launched they deal with the new crisis by... standing still looking at screens in near darkness as if they had all the time in the world. Merchant-Ivory films have better action scenes.

Things aren't much livelier down on Earth where the movie spends most of it's running time with Matheson's son/Chuck's grandson Corin Nemec trying to hitch a ride to the spaceport across an arid landscape with Palance's insane desert artist "looking for that note out there while the chicks still dig me" while waylaid by rejects from a Mad Max ripoff and evil corporate suits who track him down so they can... release him on a nice beach. Just don't expect logic, if you haven't already guessed that much. Best moment? A ditzy girl in a bar describing Jack Palance as "An old guy with white hair and a face like rotting leather," though Chucky Baby taking out the villain's aircraft with a bazooka fired from the hip from an office window or beating up a barfly who likes his beret are welcome morsels of camp in a film that for 99% of it's running time offers a whole lot of nuttin'. Richard C. Sarafian's slightly longer original cut that played in Japan offers an additional six minutes but cries out to be cut down to a more manageable 17 minutes: the director of Vanishing Point must have thanked his lucky stars when this re-edit gave him an excuse to take his name off the film. A film so bad it's not good, and painfully unfunny with it.

The DVD isn't even a good presentation of the cut 'Alan Smithee' version - while the film was shot in 2.35:1 widescreen, it's been cropped to fullscreen here.

How they ever shanghied Charlton Heston into this movie I'll never know. Really good effects ( What did you expect from Rishard Edlund, 2010 effecter), decent acting, but stupid subplot on Earth which, unless you pay very close attention to the dialoge, has no relevence to the movie at all. The plotline aboard the Helios is good, but extremely marred by the earth bound one. The end rips off 2001, and the Widescreening of the movie hardly makes any difference

I enjoyed it somewhat. The effects make up for the bad subplot, and Charlton Heston is good as always. Good idea, which has been used in various forms for a long time, is presented in a way that makes you wish they had a bigger budget, because they were on the right track with Solar Crisis, but didn't have the money to give it the treatment it deserved. My advice, if you are a non-discriminating Sci-fi fan, get it, others beware.

SOLAR CRISIS, a Japanese/American co-production, never seems to understand what it wants to be. The main plot concerns a solar flare that will decimate the earth and kill all living habitants; a secondary plot involves a young military academy student who goes AWOL to join his father on the mission to deflect the solar flare. Thats where the movie's problem lies; the movie could have survived without the subplot at all. Makes it appear as though the writers felt the solar mission couldn't sustain the entire movie, so they threw in this other plot to make it 90 minutes. The only good thing about the subplot is the inspired performance by the late Jack Palance as a seemingly demented "road warrior."
As for the solar mission, Tim Matheson again sabotages a role that could have been played by countless other actors; Annabel Schofield makes for a lovely saboteur; and Dorian Harewood is the token minority who tries to keep things going on board. Charlton Heston is wasted as Matheson's father and Peter Boyle is his usual surly self as the corporate wizard who will stop at nothing to make money. Brenda Bakke as his sidekick slithers around, smoking funky looking cigarettes.
For a 1992 movie, the effects are adequate, and there is some suspense in the final moments, but overall, SOLAR CRISIS burns out because it's too heavy.

I would actually give this "film" no stars. Quite possibly, next to a few others, this has to be one of the most convuluted, boring and sickening movies to watch. Want the storyline? Refer to the title, and thats about as exstensive as it gets. I own this on laser disc and have wanted to burn it for years. So many quality films being excluded from dvd and this pile of junk gets released. Too bad alot of good actors got caught up in this mess, but they are just as responsible. Man, this is bad, dont waste a dime on it.

Here is your first clue - Directed by Alan Smithee. I would definitely like to know the story behind this movie. Like some of the previous reviewers I'll point out that this film is definitely a failure, but I would love to see the original screenplay. It seems to me that this movie was probably supposed to be 2+ hours and somebody came into the editing room and randomly removed large chunks to shrink the running time. I can't even discuss the performances because they all seem so incomplete. Here is an examples. When Annabel Schofield's character starts acting odd Matheson's character says that he knew she didn't look right. This is the first moment she didn't look right so what is he talking about. Plus, her "not looking right" looked way over blown. Something is missing or we're supposed to believe that the other characters are real morons who can't tell when there is something physically wrong with someone else. Anyway, there are a lot of things that don't make sense in this movie because it seems like there are missing pieces. As I said, I would love to read the original screenplay because there is actually a lot of potential for a good story, but the filmmakers really messed up. Alan Smithee was the right choice for this Director when it came time to get credit. I'm sure if they've ever seen it that the prominent actors in the film would have loved to use Alan Smithee in place of their own names as well. The problem with SOLAR CRISIS might have been the writing, but if it were written the way it came out I don't see why anyone would have put money into the project. It seems that if you read the screenplay line for line the way the movie turned out it would make even less sense than the finished product does. I think this one died when the budget ran out or when the editors had to chop it too much. More than likely the CG spending on top of Palance, Boyle, Matheson, and ESPECIALLY HESTON's salaries caused the well to go dry on this one.

Solar Crisis turned out to be a surprise. At first, the film starts out as a typical science fiction movie; you know, pretentious. Then, slowly as the plot finally emerges out from its "suspense"--behold!--a story that can be considered truly "science fiction." Without giving its ending away, Solar Crisis spiral its story and its characters into the heart of the sun. The movie does one thing that most science fiction film of late have failed to accomplish or forgotten its original premise: that self-sacrifice--not space exploration--is the ultimate adventure.

The first sign that this film is no good is it's directed by "Alan Smithee". "Smithee" is a psudonyum for directors who want to disassociate themselves from a finished picture. Too bad the stars didn't have the same luxery: Peter Boyle, Jack Palance, Charlton Heston, Tim Matherson. The hard-to-follow story deals with evacuation of Earth during a probable supernova of the Sun (I think) but what you really get is an unstable bastardization of "2001" and "Road Warrior". This film may have impressive special FX but the best visuals in the world don't mean a thing if you don't have a halfway decent story to go with it.