Search - Falling Fire on DVD

Falling Fire makes it's mark

Malcolm Genesis | Oakville, Ont, Canada | 12/12/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I first read about this one in Cinefantastique magazine two years ago. They did an unusual rave about this low-cost sci-fi film directed by Daniel Dor (he's a guy always tied up with Roger Corman or G. Phillip Jackson in the credits of many half-decent low-budget sci-fi's). In any event, they were justified. This picture is another one of the "Earth will be hit by an asteroid" genere but it was made before "Deep Impact" or "Armageddon". Guess what? The script is way better than Armageddon, and in some ways better than Deep Impact", but here's the stunner. The $2,000,000 picture also has great special effects. The story intercuts between major outer space action and major Earth action. This is the first story in which it's humanity's fault the asteroid might hit. The idea is an asteroid is being brought into Earth orbit for mining purposes from peep space. We learn that the Earths environment is really going down the toilet by 2050 when this takes place and an eco-terrorists sets off enough nuclear charges to cause the asteroids orbit to fail and risk hitting earth. We learn that if it hits the catastrophy will destroy humanity on earth. That's the terrorists way of giving mother nature a second chance -kill all people! The whole thing plays lile a sort of ecological allegory. But if its just action and FX you want there's enough of that. Michael Pare is good in a role that turns out to be more complex than we would have expected, and there's a nice Agatha Christie who-dunnit quality of mystery as murders unfold aboard the ship accompanying the asteroid towards Earth from deap space. This will in the long run be dentined to become some kind of classic."