Chill Factor

A tiny movie review of Chill Factor, starring Skeet Ulrich and Cuba Gooding, Jr.

Remember the movie Speed was pretty successful, and its sequel, Speed 2, was wildly unsuccessful? Well, Chill Factor is touted as Speed, but it channels Speed 2 in every conceivable way, especially the bad parts. It's still better than About Last Night and Random Hearts.

What I Liked

• There were several beautiful scenery shots. Gorgeous stuff.
• In an attempt to liberate an unlocked pickup truck, one needs keys, correct? The standard cliche is that the keys are (conveniently) in the visor. This time, the would-be thief searches there, but finds nothing.
• Skeet Ulrich mostly played a realistic (non-)action star
  
• It ended.

What I Didn't Like

• Everything else.

As non-cliche as the truck key scene was, the rest of the movie was full of cliches and just plain rotten. For me to notice something like that, it must be pretty bad. Most of my movies rated at Netflix are four and five stars, so I'm pretty darn forgiving of movies, or at the least I'm looking at something different even in standard fare.

Other than Ulrich's character, Mason, doing the right thing out of loyalty to a friend and because it's the right thing to do, there's not much to like about the movie. This theme of doing right is not explored nearly enough in either capacity. I'm not that picky a person as far as movies are concerned, but this was just awful, painful even. Bad editing, bad sound, bad continuity. Just bad all the way around.

For instance, at one point they talk about how hot it is otuside (because the "stuff" needs to stay below 50°F in order to remain inert). Then everyone is wearing jackets and long sleeves throughout the movie. Or, there's a perfectly good ice chest holding the stuff, but Mason takes off his long sleeve shirt and puts the vials of "stuff" in it and covers it in ice. Why? The ice chest will fit through the hole he has to carry it through. No, the sole purpose of this is so the vial can be broken on the ground during the final fight with the bad guy and have the heat activate the vial.

Sorry if you think that's a spoiler, but the whole movie is a spoiler, a perfect waste of a good sick day!