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It's a normal day of hard hats and hazards for New York's finest tunnel workers until a group of them are assaulted by acid, sulphur and...lava? Nearby meanwhile, a determined scientist works against the clock to drill through the earth's crust and bring forth what he claims will be a fabulous new source of energy for all mankind. Are the two events related?<br /><br />The purpose of 'Disaster Zone: Volcano In New York', apart from having an unnecessarily long title, seems to be to convince the viewer that 1997's 'Volcano' with Tommy Lee Jones was a cinematic masterpiece by showing what it might have been if it had been produced by the Sci Fi Channel. This was not a thought experiment that needed to be conducted. This is very much the same film on a budget and economising is evident everywhere, from dodgy cgi to a workmanlike script, two-dimensional characters, plot clichés and badly-matched documentary stock footage. What it doesn't steal from 'Volcano', it cribs liberally from 'Inferno', a classic 1970 Doctor Who serial all about a determined scientist drilling through the earth's crust in search of a revolutionary new energy source. Yes, it was an interesting idea, and it was done better elsewhere.<br /><br />Nonetheless, you might be tempted to give 'Disaster Zone' a look if like me, you're a fan of both disaster flicks and indeed volcano disaster flicks. Such temptation should be firmly resisted, especially when the worthy name 'Michael Ironside', whose character utters the immortal line in the title of this comment, appears in the credits. That outburst is about as unintentionally funny as it gets. The fact that even his performance is ridiculous suggests that the rest of the cast, themselves largely unknown, might actually be decent actors in another time and place. Therefore, being neither especially good nor especially bad enough to be entertaining, 'Volcano In New York' will recreate a disaster zone in your living room should you choose to follow in my footsteps and be mad enough to watch it. |