Inferno |
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USA • 1998 • 90m •
  • Directed by: Ian Barry. • Starring: James Remar, Stephanie Niznik, Daniel von Bargen, Anthony Starke, Kathryn Morris, Fredric Lehne, Jonathan LaPaglia, Sharisse Baker-Bernard, Frank Birney, Terry Camilleri, Kimberly Campbell, Scott Carollo, Dennis Creaghan. • Music by: Joel Goldsmith, Alex Wilkinson.      When a huge fireball hurtles towards the Earth the authorities have only hours to react before temperatures soar beyond human tolerance.
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Review:
We begin with some solar flares or something, which makes Los Angeles really hot. A bunch of military types gather in a room and recite fabulous lines like "Have you ever been in a war before? Well, this is a war." Suitably impressed, we then get into the sappy personal interest stories.
There's a teacher who's entire life revolves (to the point of mild insanity) around reforming a gang member. The gang member basically hates the teacher, and once the disaster sets in, he and his fellow gang bangers turn a couple of blocks of LA into a war zone. Oh yes, it's easy to see why we should share the teacher's concern for this person. This whole subplot plays out like some sort of Hollywood cultural awareness sensitivity training seminar.
After this, we've got a couple of tow truck drivers, one a stupid, sleazy male and the other an opportunistic, sleazy female. The male is in love with a lifeguard, who goes on her own subplot with a doctor who lost his license because he was too compassionate and kind and sensitive and generally nausea inducing to practice medicine in a hospital run by an evil HMO. The lifeguard turns, magically, into a professional nurse halfway through so she can work together with the doctor to save the previously mentioned gang banger (as the teacher donates his own blood to save him, and yells "you've got to do something!" as the heart monitor flatlines). Meanwhile, the sleazy female tow truck driver cooks up a plan to rob a bank.
She walks into a military base and walks out with a howitzer. She flips someone a salute, and that fools everyone into thinking that she's in the military and has permission to enter the base. The sleazy male tow truck driver torches the lock off the gate of the military base without anyone noticing, then lights his cigarette with the torch. Once he gets his share of the bank robbery money, he kidnaps the lifeguardnurse and takes her back to his sewer.
Etcetera. There's some more crap with the military, but it's too awful to get into (It involves the teacher character).
Stephanie Niznik looks terrific, though her character isn't very likable, but she says all her crappy lines with that deliciously deep voice of hers. And she sweats a lot. Kathryn Morris steals the show as the sleazy tow truck driver, the only likable character and the only one who rises above being a compilation of clichés. Everyone else is a cardboard cutout in comparison to her character.
Review by Jack from the Internet Movie Database.
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