Watch American Meltdown For Free

Simply A Masterpiece

How sad is this?

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Terrorist takes over a nuclear power plant in Southern California, and state department tries to control the situation.Fencing match between the US government, and the terrorists ensues when terrorists take over a nuclear power plant. Not much happens except that both sides are edgy, and news cast reports the developing situations. Surprising true motive of the terrorist becomes clear, but situation is different from the intended motive. It's up to the terrorist and the federal agent to rectify the situation.Good drama, with slow burn type plot that was popular in the early 2000's. I'm not a fan of slow burn, so this didn't become my favorite. If you're looking for strait action, look for other movies. If you're looking for a good situation drama, this one might be for you.

Director Jeremiah Checheck who brought us big budget debacles like "The Avengers" and the remake of "Diabolique" has directed this ripoff of the Die Hard concept, done on - what looks like - a Blair Witch budget. A California nuclear reactor is overtaken by Arab terrorists. But - are you ready? - the terrorists aren't Arab; they're really disgruntled American soldiers masquerading as Arabs! We find out that they don't really intend to blow up the reactor just make a statement. We're not sure what the statement is but never mind. So there's really no threat. But then one of the terrorists decides to go it alone and actually blow up the plant because he's kind of crazy. So maybe there is a threat after all. But the army goes in and all the bad guys are killed. So there was no threat. Oh, and a good guy is killed too. Let that be a lesson to everybody.If all of this sounds muddled and kinda of a waste of time then you got the idea of what watching Meltdown is all about.The script never bothers to introduce the characters or to even give any personal details that might flesh them out or emotionally involve the audience. So we're left with one dimensional characters: the-expert-that-nobody-will-listen-to; the-trigger-happy-sergeant; the-slimy-politicians; the-dweeby-Engineers. The story skips from one cliché incident to the next in a formula composite of practically every action movie you've ever seen. But at nearly every turn, just when we think something may be at stake the script flinches and we find out there's actually nothing to worry about.Like Die Hard, there's an police officer who's on the inside, unbenownst to the bad guys. The big twist is that the cop here is....A WOMAN! Oh and she's injured too. But not that bad, just enough to make her wince a couple times. Oh and instead of the walkie talkie that Bruce Willis had this cop has a magic cell phone that works everywhere...even underground! When he's not yelling at everybody else Bruce Greenwood - his jaw made out of granite - tries to soothe her over the walkie talkie. He even makes a joke once but we're afraid his face might crack. After all, this is serious business.But mostly it's scene after scene of people arguing: the Military expert is arguing to wait it out (his reasoning doesn't seem particularly sound but he's supposed to be the smart guy in this movie so okaaaay); the people at the White House argue with him; the army sergeant argues with him too; the nice Pakistani Nuclear Engineer argues with the main terrorist. The dialogue is absolutely B Movie all the way and lines like, "stop the broadcast! STOP THE BROADCAST!!!" may have you in rolling off your sofa as you wonder if the characters are actually referring to this silliness.Maybe to compensate for the lack of production quality the camera-work is kept jittery in that faux documentary 21 Grams style that's supposed to lend immediacy and energy to the scenes but the way it's indiscriminately and amateurishly applied here it's downright annoying; even pretentious. Further attempts to ratchet up the tempo are made with the inclusion of nonsensical black and white footage that's randomly intercut with the main action. But this, too, is pretentious and annoying in that Blair Witch kinda way. In short, the stylistic attempts look very amateurish.The music lives up to the visuals - it's synthy and cheap sounding. Sort of like a porn movie but with less melody and lots more heart beat sounds. The graphic treatment is howlingly bad too: cheesy graphics in huge red font scream out to us "9:28 pm" as though the timeclock actually makes some kind of difference.Meltdown may work as a marketing concept but it's clear that the script was a second thought. FX - part of Fox - put this cheesy production together and dropped several million dollars on it. Now THAT'S what I call a meltdown!

If you thought NBC's 10.5 was stupid, you'll be happy to hear that FX reached into the bowels of made-for-TV hell and squished it's fingers into this pseudo post-9/11 poop. Not only was the plot stupid, it was a complete ripoff of 24 and a bad ripoff at that. The filming style was the now overused "docu-action" look, complete with cuts to grainy B&W "rawcore" footage. I'm not quite sure what that means, but it sure sounds like something the DP said to the director before filming. I don't know what they were going for here but it reminded me of the guy at the office who thinks Powerpoint presentations with "fly-ins" and "animations" are "cool."The story is that 6 "terrorists" take over a nuclear power plant in southern CA. That's right, nuclear power plants, where hundreds of people work, where there's security precautions up the ying-yang. For the sake of reality, they put 2 off-duty CHiPpies in the mix. Because, they'd be able to stop 6 people, right? Six. I mean, even Bruce Willis had to deal with more terrorists over at that stupid Nakatomi building.Leslie Hope (TV's Teri Bauer) plays a CHP officer who has problems talking on the phone after she's shot in her bullet-proof vest. Her voice sounds like a Sally Struther's TV ad, whiny and monotonous. Her character is only a plot device, and after she performs her one small duty, she is promptly disposed of. Yes, Teri Bauer is died! Bruce Greenwood stars as FBI S.A.C. Tom Shea, who continually points out how he punches foreign diplomats in the face. His boss is out, so nobody over at the Dept. of Homeland Security believes his prognosis of the situation. He's the sensible one out of a group of paranoid public officials afraid of taking blame for any type of catastrophe. He's calm, he's strong, he's BORING.There is absolutely nothing redeeming or entertaining about Meltdown - OK, well maybe Teri Bauer getting died was pretty unnecessary and funny - other than that, nothing redeeming.

I was anticipating the premiere of Meltdown after I saw billboards for its release two weeks prior and I must say that it did not disappoint. In the beginning it appeared to be a typical terrorist flick depicting Arab speaking people or fundamentalist Muslims as those invoking the terror-as if others do not commit heinous acts in the name of religion.However, the movie took an interesting turn when it was revealed that terrorists that had taken over and were currently occupying the San Juan Nuclear Power Facility were not in fact Muslims or even Arabs for that matter. They were very much American, highly decorated American commandos to be exact. What follows is a series of events proving that those enshrined with our security are often the first sent off to be slaughtered.It was also interesting that every point of the movie which could be related in real life (news anchors, the name of the power plant) were intentionally fictionalized, whereas in other situations actual news anchors from various stations are used. Too close to home? Too real? Perhaps, only time will tell.