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RyanS32
Reviews
14 Hours (2005)
Somewhat believable if you are from anywhere but Houston
This movie starts off on the wrong foot and never really gets it going. The first scene shows a Life Flight helicopter landing and just outside the window you can distinctly see mountains in the background. For those of you who might not ever have been to Houston there is no elevation change. The city sits just above sea level and a 5 ft. incline is considered a big hill. To go along with that scenery, any shots outside of the hospital immediately tell the viewer that they are not in Houston. The trees are all missing leaves or are pine trees, neither of which Houston has very much of. Even the hospital itself, on the outside, is very unbelievable. Memorial Hermann Hospital is one of the top hospitals in the United States and sits smack dab in the middle of the Medical District just miles from downtown Houston, yet every outside shot of the hospital makes it appear that the hospital is out in the suburbs or even the countryside.
It is obvious that whoever was in charge of the actual tropical storm part of the movie skimped out because the numerous shots of radar are all wrong. The first radar image in the movie is that of Hurrican Hugo hitting South Carolina. We later see Kris Kristofferson leaving his job and one of his assistants tells him that Alison is moving back south across Houston yet the radar image he shows has Alison clearly moving north off of the Gulf of Mexico into Houston...probably the initial landfall of Alison.
As for the acting, it isn't all that bad. JoBeth Williams, Kris Kristofferson and Rick Schroder all do a decent job considering that this is a straight-to-TV movie. The plot of the story is decent and the fact that it is based on a true story makes it a bit more entertaining. My one problem with the acting is the portrayal of Houstonians with big thick Southern accents...the actors all sound like they are from Birmingham, Alabama and not Houston, Texas.
The movie gets its point across and to the general audience it does exactly what it is meant to: entertain. If you are looking for a factual account of what happened to the city of Houston in June of 2001 then you will be disappointed. One thing to keep in mind before viewing this movie is that it is based solely on the evacuation of Memorial Hermann Hospital and not on Tropical Storm Alison and the impact on Houston metro itself. If you are looking for a factual account of Tropical Storm Alison's impact on Houston metro might I suggest watching The Weather Channel's Storm Stories for Tropical Storm Alison.
*1/2 out of *****
10.5 (2004)
Waste of my time
I don't think that there are enough words in the English language to describe quite how awful this miniseries is. From the beginning with the biker and the first "quake" in SeaTac to the very end of this miniseries the acting is horrible, the script is a mess and while I realize that this is a "science-fiction" genre show, little credence can be given to any of the "science" in this show.
To start off with the acting I just have to say that Kaley Cuoco has the acting talent of a grapefruit. Her character is quite possibly the most annoying character in any movie I have ever seen. Beau Bridges, Fred Ward, Dule Hill and Kim Delaney could have done better but the bad acting might also be due to a horrible script.
The script is an absolute mess. This is more like a 4 hour long soap opera than a scifi drama. Each character is somehow connected to another ala Kevin Bacon 6 Degrees of Separation yet it takes almost the entire first part of the series to figure this out. Time doesn't appear to be a concept in this series at all. There is just WAY too much happening in one day as the first three "quakes" all take place in about an 18 hour time span in which Delaney and David Cubitt somehow end up making it from Seattle to LA then up to Redding and then BACK to LA all within that time span while still managing to have time to research data in LA and spend time out in the field in Redding. As Vizzini would say in The Princess Bride "INCONCEIVABLE!"
With these big blockbuster made-for-TV miniseries you expect some of this but there are just too many TVM clichés in this series. I expected the one redeeming quality of this show to be the computer graphics but even those were weak, especially in the scenes involving the Space Needle, Amtrak and the Golden Gate Bridge, just to name a few.
All in all, if you enjoy cheesy scifi dramas with bad acting, poor scripting and low-budget graphics then this is your miniseries. Otherwise please don't waste 4 hours of your life as I did.