This is a movie of two halves. This movie has been seriously over-rated by some critics. It's not a bad idea but there's not enough here to justify a 90+ minute movie. At best, it would make a fair, maybe hour-long episode of "The Twilight Zone" or "The Outer Limits". The tension and confusion at the start well conveys the panic and ignorance of those affected but once action is confined to the house and most of what is going on has been exposed, there is little left to keep the drama going. The over-reactions of characters at times leaves us feeling like we are looking at children rather than adults. In fact, the child in the movie is the only one not to over-react. The twist, when it does come, comes too late. I already hated everyone in the movie and was just waiting and waiting for the death to happen. The fact that the husband rather than the wife initially died really didn't move me. The fact that the wife probably won't die did leave me feeling cheated. She had been close to ground zero and exposed for days so if anyone should die, then she should. For me, there are just too many occurrences that I find implausible.
This is another movie that I will be happy to never watch again.
A basic plot summary follows so you never have to go through the pain of actually watching this movie.
The first half of the story is a tense, feral journey through one man's experiences as bombs, which later turn out to be dirty bombs, explode on the morning commuter crowds streaming into Los Angeles. One of those commuters is his wife and his confusion and panic is increased due to the fact that they are new to the city, that radio reports are patchy and that vital services such as electricity and telecommunications are not working as they should. We follow him around as he desperately tries to track down where his wife is and as he prepares for the worst. Shortly afterward, both he and the Hispanic handyman from next door, who has pleaded to be be given shelter in this man's home as his own is too far away to safely get to safely, finally finish sealing the house, his wife arrives home. She is dusty and bloody and has a bad cough, which is put down to the toxins and microbial pathogens in the dust from the dirty bombs. She is naturally somewhat upset at being locked out but she is not let back into the house despite the difficult emotions and basic instincts involved.
So now comes the awful second half. She then she breaks one of the glass panes with her mobile phone that lands on the floor covered in toxic dust thus breaking the protective seal of the house. The man of the house merely covers this threat with a blanket - implausible act number 1 (and possibly implausible act #2 if you accept that no wife would risk her husband's health in such a way but we'll write that off as panic). Rory Cochrane then repeats his "bug shower" scene from "A Scanner Darkly", but this time with a bottle of bleach, in order to cleanse himself from the toxic dust contact (in fact most of his darting paranoid looks seem to work equally well in both movies). He still leaves the phone and dust covered with a blanket though!! The handyman from next door decides that he has to get home, no matter what the risk, despite his earlier stoicism in the face of this episode - implausible. The wife then finds a child that has come out of a car with its alarm turned on, i.e. the child exits a car in the street, it's alarm goes off - how did he get into it without alarm going off? Who put the alarm on after he got in? - implausible. The wife avoids police, army and helicopter patrols to get to and return from hospital, where the authorities take the kid she's found for treatment but turn her away and let her go. Why then were we shown, in earlier scenes, cops taking people off streets by handcuffing them and bundling them into vans, but now find out that they're ignoring everyone gathered outside the hospitals? - implausible. In the meantime, a specialist group of army technicians and possibly doctors (it's not clear) come to the house, question the sole occupant and take away a sample, for analysis, of the dust that is still just sitting there under the blanket. Wow, it almost sounds action-packed when I type it out. Believe me, it is not. So, we now know there has been widespread contamination outside, we know that the wife was very close to the initial explosions when they happened downtown, we know that she has been exposed to this dust for days and we expect that she must now die. We wait, and wait, and wait for this to happen. Numerous attempts at "moments of emotion" later, the guys in the chem-suits are back. They grab the wife and then .... tell the husband that his non-air-conditioned house has incubated the bomb's organisms and the sealed environment has meant that his house now has a deadly concentration of same. How they can tell the concentration of a virus in the air from a sample of dust on the ground is anyone's guess - implausible! They board up the house, with him still inside, and gas it inside a chemical control tent. The wife is told that she'll probably survive (despite having just coughed up a nice little lump of semi-congealed blood) - implausible. The End!
This is another movie that I will be happy to never watch again.
A basic plot summary follows so you never have to go through the pain of actually watching this movie.
The first half of the story is a tense, feral journey through one man's experiences as bombs, which later turn out to be dirty bombs, explode on the morning commuter crowds streaming into Los Angeles. One of those commuters is his wife and his confusion and panic is increased due to the fact that they are new to the city, that radio reports are patchy and that vital services such as electricity and telecommunications are not working as they should. We follow him around as he desperately tries to track down where his wife is and as he prepares for the worst. Shortly afterward, both he and the Hispanic handyman from next door, who has pleaded to be be given shelter in this man's home as his own is too far away to safely get to safely, finally finish sealing the house, his wife arrives home. She is dusty and bloody and has a bad cough, which is put down to the toxins and microbial pathogens in the dust from the dirty bombs. She is naturally somewhat upset at being locked out but she is not let back into the house despite the difficult emotions and basic instincts involved.
So now comes the awful second half. She then she breaks one of the glass panes with her mobile phone that lands on the floor covered in toxic dust thus breaking the protective seal of the house. The man of the house merely covers this threat with a blanket - implausible act number 1 (and possibly implausible act #2 if you accept that no wife would risk her husband's health in such a way but we'll write that off as panic). Rory Cochrane then repeats his "bug shower" scene from "A Scanner Darkly", but this time with a bottle of bleach, in order to cleanse himself from the toxic dust contact (in fact most of his darting paranoid looks seem to work equally well in both movies). He still leaves the phone and dust covered with a blanket though!! The handyman from next door decides that he has to get home, no matter what the risk, despite his earlier stoicism in the face of this episode - implausible. The wife then finds a child that has come out of a car with its alarm turned on, i.e. the child exits a car in the street, it's alarm goes off - how did he get into it without alarm going off? Who put the alarm on after he got in? - implausible. The wife avoids police, army and helicopter patrols to get to and return from hospital, where the authorities take the kid she's found for treatment but turn her away and let her go. Why then were we shown, in earlier scenes, cops taking people off streets by handcuffing them and bundling them into vans, but now find out that they're ignoring everyone gathered outside the hospitals? - implausible. In the meantime, a specialist group of army technicians and possibly doctors (it's not clear) come to the house, question the sole occupant and take away a sample, for analysis, of the dust that is still just sitting there under the blanket. Wow, it almost sounds action-packed when I type it out. Believe me, it is not. So, we now know there has been widespread contamination outside, we know that the wife was very close to the initial explosions when they happened downtown, we know that she has been exposed to this dust for days and we expect that she must now die. We wait, and wait, and wait for this to happen. Numerous attempts at "moments of emotion" later, the guys in the chem-suits are back. They grab the wife and then .... tell the husband that his non-air-conditioned house has incubated the bomb's organisms and the sealed environment has meant that his house now has a deadly concentration of same. How they can tell the concentration of a virus in the air from a sample of dust on the ground is anyone's guess - implausible! They board up the house, with him still inside, and gas it inside a chemical control tent. The wife is told that she'll probably survive (despite having just coughed up a nice little lump of semi-congealed blood) - implausible. The End!