Released: February 2021(USA)
Director: Simon West
Not Rated
Run Time: 92 Minutes
Distributor: Screen Media
Genre: Action/Adventure
Cast:
Hannah Quinlivan: Meng Li
Xueqi Wang: Wentao Li
Liang Shi: Professor Jiang
Jason Isaacs: Jack Harris
The disaster film has been a large part of action cinema for decades. Starting with Irwin Allen’s films like The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno and other films during the 70s like Earthquake, disaster movies have thrilled and terrified audiences for a long time. After the 70s, the sub-genre went silent until the mid-90s with the release of Twister. The resurgence of the disaster film in the last years of the 20th century gave us movies like Independence Day, Deep Impact, Armageddon, Volcano, and Dante’s Peak. Most of these movies were simple pop-corn action flicks. During the first decade of the new century, the genre once again went silent with the exception of movies like 2012, The Core, and The Day After Tomorrow. Almost every other disaster movie released during that time was a direct-to-scifi-channel schlock: Poorly executed stories with horrendous visual effects and acting. Then in 2012, along The Impossible, a disaster movie based on the tragic tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean back in 2004. This movie showed that you can have a thrilling disaster movie that actually focuses on characters, making for a more intense film. While we still got more traditional disaster flicks, some of them came from countries that we didn’t expect them too. For example: 2015’s The Wave came from Norway, and it was pretty spectacular while it had a basis in reality. So far, in 2021, the only disaster movie that was worth mention was Greenland, a comet movie that I reviewed some time ago. It was fantastic. The movie I bring you today is Skyfire, a Chinese disaster flick that was initially released back in 2019, but didn’t hit the United States until about two months ago. So, how does Skyfire compare to other disaster movies? Let’s find out.
Skyfire begins on the island of Tianhuo, a volcanic island in the South China Sea. As the volcano erupts, scientist Wentao Li ends up escaping the island with his young daughter, Meng. Unfortunately, Meng’s mother is killed in a pyroclastic flow. 20 years later, Meng Li is a scientist in the employ of tycoon Jack Harris, who has built a theme park attraction on Tianhuo Island with a main attraction having a monorail going all the way up to the crater of the island’s volcano. When the volcano begins to show signs of activity, Meng’s father shows up to get his daughter. When the volcano finally erupts, it’s a race against time to evacuate people off the island. Essentially, this is Dante’s Peak spliced with Jurassic Park. Let’s be honest, shall we? Nobody comes to these movies expecting a life-changing narrative. No, people come to see shit blow up, and that’s exactly what happens here. The movie surprisingly doesn’t waste much time getting to the action. Within a couple of minutes of the movie starting, we’re witness to a pretty big eruption that sets the stage for the rest of the movie. Every narrative trope that you’ve seen in every other disaster flick is here. You’ve got estranged family members, a requisite romance, and a greedy corporate executive that ignores the warnings of a scientist. It’s par for the course for these movies. It’s a delightful throwback to the disaster movies of the 90s. Is it as good as something similar like Dante’s Peak? Not particularly, but it’s a hell of a lot better than Volcano, which came out around the same time, and I enjoyed Volcano.
Let’s get the negatives out of the way. The acting in this movie is atrocious. With the exception of the legendary Jason Isaacs, most of the actors are fairly monotone with very little emotion. It’s either no emotion, or they go way over-the-top. It’s even worse when you watch the movie with English dubbing. There’s a reason why I hate dubbing in movies. The performance from the voice-actors is very different from the actual actors on the screen. The only one that is truly consistent here is Jason Isaacs as Jack Harris. Isaacs has always been fun to watch, whether he’s playing a villain or good guy. Sadly, his character is the only one that really gets any sort of character development, because everybody knows what happens to greedy corporate execs in disaster movies. Isaac’s Jack Harris is one of those characters that I didn’t actually hate. I didn’t really hate any character in this movie, but the leads were BLAND. Hannah Quinlivan is a stunning actress, but I don’t think she can carry a movie on her own. For the most, most of the characters are volcano-fodder. You’re basically placing bets on who dies next.
That brings us to the action and the special effects. Given that Skyfire is a volcano movie, the necessity of good visual effects is paramount. Being a fan of Dante’s Peak, Skyfire doesn’t really hold a candle to that movie, as that film had a larger budget and utilized a lot of practical volcanic effects and stunt-work. There was definitely CG used, but it was done to augment what was actually happening on the screen. The volcano effects in Skyfire are largely CGI, but I have to admit that given the budget and who made this movie, the effects were rather spectacular…mostly. There were a couple of shots here and there that were janky as hell, but this is a genre that really isn’t a specialty of Hong Kong film-making. Given their inexperience with this genre, the results are surprisingly good. The actual eruption is stunning. Realistic? Not really, given the kind of volcano that they’re using, but I’ll dig into those issue later on. What really surprised me was the amount of actual practical effects that were used. There were a lot of actual explosions that were being used and the stunt-work is really good. Director Simon West cut his teeth on movies like Con-Air, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and The Expendables 2. I wouldn’t call him the greatest action director of all time, but he is very competent and that effort shows in Skyfire. The film is a ride from beginning to end. It’s perfectly paced, and it doesn’t over-stay its welcome. For 90 minutes, it’s a roller-coaster ride.
If you’re looking for scientific accuracy in a volcano movie, you’d best stick with Dante’s Peak, because that movie at least made an honest effort to keep the science as accurate as possible when it comes to volcanos. Skyfire takes any scientific accuracy and throws it out the window. It is not a movie that is concerned with any accuracy whatsoever. For example: The volcano seen in the film is a cone volcano, so the lava that you see in this movie is unlikely to come from this kind of mountain. Why? The lava that comes from cone volcanos tends to be very sticky and it traps gases in it which results in extremely explosive eruptions like what you see in Dante’s Peak or the real-life eruption of Mount St. Helens. Also, the idea of sticking an observatory in the crater of an active volcano is incredibly stupid. It’s a structure that simply couldn’t exist on a mountain like that. Not only that, the film claims that the mountain erupts unexpectedly quickly. While it is true that volcanic eruptions are difficult to predict and sometimes it does happen, with a mountain like this there are a lot of warning signs that occur hours, even days before the main eruption. The fact that the scientists didn’t even see these warning signs in advance, shows how incompetent they actually are. Of course, if they did, we wouldn’t have a movie, so…c’est la vie.
Given the film’s clear disregard for scientific accuracy, weak acting, and by-the-numbers story, would I still recommend this movie? Actually, yes. Yes, I would. Despite the issues that plagues the film, it’s a lot of fun to watch. It starts off with a bang, and it really doesn’t let up. The CGI is surprisingly decent and mixed with impressive practical stunts and effects. It’s actually a really well-made disaster flick that ticks all the right boxes. While I wouldn’t say that Skyfire is going to beat Greenland in terms of characterizations and story-telling, it’s a visual roller-coaster ride, and if you go into this movie expecting a good time, you’ll probably get it. For those that are discerning in their disaster movie tastes, this might not be the movie that tickles your fancy. For a Chinese movie that was directed by a British director and stars Jason Isaacs, I had a hell of a time with it. Stupid? Yeah, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t a lot of fun, and considering the amount of crappy DTV disaster movies out there, Skyfire stands pretty damn tall.
My Final Recommendation: Some film-makers are too pre-occupied with whether or not they could, but they don’t stop to think if they should. 7/10.