Nature Unleashed: Avalanche
August. 06,2004It begins on a glacier nestled on a frozen peak high in the wild Ural Mountains of Russia, kissed by clouds, the top of the world. A lonely, forbidding place, it's home to THOM CUSSLER and brother, JOCK, a pair of transplanted westerners seeking their fortune in Russia's new capitalist economy. They run a hard-luck snowmobile tour business that takes adventurous winter tourists up the mountains to experience the ultimate extreme winter thrill. During one such excursion, a massive ledge of snow at the top of the ridge suddenly collapses and an avalanche crashes down! Only the quick thinking and expert driving of Thom and Jock saves them. The tiny village of Dubroz, nestled far below, is not so lucky. Avalanche sirens wail, but the panicked villagers barely have time to act as the avalanche crashes down! A wall of snow smashes into one end of the village, blasting-in windows, collapsing and burying buildings... Written by GFT Entertainment
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Reviews
Pretty Good
If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.
Blistering performances.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
A group of people that I never truly identify with attempt to fight off a poorly-CGI'd (with the help of some abysmal practical effects thrown in) avalanche from destroying a snow lodge that refuse to close despite the mounting evidence of impeding doom (no pun intended) I believe this originally was a SyFy film but I saw it on Encore Suspense which I preferred as I didn't have to fast-forward every 6 minutes are so due to the vastly numerous amount of commercials on that channel.But I digress, back to the movie at hand, it's boring, overly melodramatic, and uninteresting. I found myself checking my watch multiple time and I don't even own a watch so it was always a freckle after a hair o'clock which in all honesty was still vastly more interesting than this movie.
Nature Unleashed: Avalanche is one of those films that you can occasionally see playing on the Syfy channel at around 2 AM, rounding out another marathon of disaster (both figuratively and literally) movies. If you have trouble sleeping at night, and happen to be up whenever this flick is playing, give it a watch, and I can almost guarantee that you'll soon be out for the night.Not to say that NU:A doesn't have moments of sporadic entertainment (especially since the titular menace behaves in an eerily similar fashion as the "sentient" tornadoes in the movie Twister), it's just that the package as a whole is bland and uninteresting, much like the snow-covered wastes that make up most of the scenery. Everything you could expect from a made-for-TV natural catastrophe movie is present and accounted for, so much so that even a few minor tweaks here-and-there still render it indistinguishable from the usual early Sunday-morning drivel.I could go on about the characters and plot, but it just seems kinda moot. Brothers Thom and Jock run a snowmobile rental service in Russia's Ural Mountains, a greedy developer is building a hotel on an unstable slope, and the pleas of a scarred female scientist fall on deaf and money-blinded ears, until disaster strikes! Throw in a few romantic subplots and useless fodder characters, and you get the drill.NU:A is not a terrible movie, just a very boring one. It's stoically serviceable in every way, but hardly entertaining. If you watch it every night, you'll never have trouble getting to sleep again.
Well, here I was with my geographical education but this certainly taught me about how avalanches work. And you can hear an avalanche growling by listening to the snow. Creaking yes, but growling? It must be the same way the Nu Image sharks growl too. And volcanoes. I love Nu Image films. A bottle of wine and no expectations are needed for this film. And the acting is so bad you can easily recreate treasured moments in your lounge with friends. Careful that your special effects aren't better than the films! If you liked this in the so bad it is totally brilliant category, make sure you watch Shark Attack3 : Megladon very soon. Cheap night in and would be a brilliant first date.
I like sci-fi and the B movie genre so this movie was actually pretty good considering the obvious low budget shots. The acting was palatable the scenes OK except I got tired to the cracking ice shots over and over again. Typical cliché riddled B movie with a few twists. Spoilt daddy's girl is not a whiny brat and actually has some business sense. Greedy Real Estate Daddy Dude actually listens to the scientist and nixes the bottom line to help save the day. Really big whammy, the Hot dude makes it with the homely scientist chick who only has 6 toes. Yep definitely did not see that coming (toe shots either) cool looking ice bar, dumb tourists. Perfect movie if you can't sleep and are stuck home with the flu for Christmas.....again