W(h)at-er mess this is! (Flood (DVD))

Name: Ailran

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Product:	Flood (DVD)
Date:	03.02.08 (108 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: London streets get a good clean

Disadvantages: Nothing at all it is just terrible.

Flood is a British movie that is aptly described by the genre it is aiming to be a success in... a disaster movie! It really is an out and out catastrophe on every possible front.
It managed a limited, one-week cinema release, in one cinema in London, mainly due to the floods striking England at the time. That, even with perfect free press for it, it didn't manage anything more than that pretty much says everything you could want to know about the movie.

While Flood is a truly mind numbingly boring film it should be noted that there is no doubt in my mind that it was written as a mini series. The whole look and feel of the film and the stylisms that are associated with the drawn out nature of the disaster mini series are obvious to see. More noticeably the story structure is very much set up in the way we come to expect a mini series to run, it is also very obvious that there is a lot of characterisation and character development that has been cut out of this version of Flood. I say this version as according to IMDB (Internet Movie DataBase) the New Zealand version is an hour longer and had two parts.

The Flood has a star studded cast of British acting talent and is... surprisingly... based around a massive flood that strikes London. The story follows how the authorities deal with the disaster, how normal Londoners manage to cope with it and, mainly, with the three people heavily involved in its defence.
Robert Carsyle is Rob, an engineer who works on the Thames Barrier, London's' primary defence against flood, his estranged wife Sam (Jessalyn Gilsig, most recently seen in Heroes) who works in the barrier running it and making sure it keeps running and his father, Leonard (Tom Courtenay) a scientist who has predicted such a flood happening and overwhelming the Barrier for many a year.
Also involved is Joanne Whalley and Nigel Planer as well as a number of recognisable faces in small parts.

The main family trio is the first of many problems in plot hole filled mess. For a start it seems unlikely that the three who can save London are all related, but also that they would have enough problems between them to be able to fill a whole movie.
Too much of the film revolves around these three and their adventures, leaving all the rest of the cast severely underdeveloped, especially those people they meet on the way struggling to get to safety. These are the ones that are normally the most interesting, the small bits of the overall story that can be related to by us everyday viewers. The officials in their 'war' room are incredibly stupid and tedious to watch, only there to explain to the dense viewers what is going on. There are even some characters that seem to have been almost completely cut out of the film, they obviously had bigger parts at one stage, especially Whalley's two daughters and a man and daughter seen a few times in their car.

All this might have been okay, you don't expect greatness from a disaster miniseries, even if it is sold as a film, in anything except it special effects. Sadly though Flood fails even in that!
It starts of all right, the scenes of the big storm that causes the flood hitting a remote weather station in Scotland is pretty impressive and gives you high hopes for the way the film is going to go. After that though it is not anywhere near as good, the computer generated floodwaters striking London look awful, they really do and when the major effect of a movie is less than perfect it brings the whole thing crashing down.
When the waters flood through the streets of London it all looks fake and that causes major damage to the credibility of the film.

The acting is not bad at all, there is nothing particularly great, even the normally sound Carlysle is below par here. This could have a lot more to do with the whole mini series things again though. The nature of the format means that there are often too many cast members and no one gets to really stand out. While this is a film the feeling that a lot has been cut out could have a lot to do with this, an ensemble piece isn't quite right when a lot of the ensemble lie on the cutting room floor!

Flood really is not worth watching at all, maybe if it is released in its original version or shown on TV as a mini series it would be much better, certainly if it reinstates all the characterisation that just MUST have been cut then it could be, but it still might only manage a 2 or 3 star rating!

Summary: A London disaster movie that is just that.