So (rather delayed) thoughts on Blackout.
Now I wanted to keep this review fairly short because, to be fair, I didn't give Blackout my full attention for the majority of it. Although, frankly, I didn't need to.
After all, how many brain cells do you need to watch your standard woman in peril flick? Less than the lead character... and that really isn't many.
I think I could call this review spoiler-free simply on the basis that everything, seriously everything, is signposted in the first five/ten minutes. The long and the short of it is; It's raining up a storm, there is badly written and acted segment of "OMG power blackout inevitable!" (during which, incidentally, all I could think was "you know, city power supply is designed in a grid system. Just shut down a few blocks for a couple of hours and you won't overload the entire grid. Numbnuts."), dysfunctional family minus dad runs errands, bumps into CN's nutter, is dysfunctional during blackout, bumps into CN's deranged psycho, becomes functional, beats CN's man with minor flaw in interpersonal skills.
Blackout is an exercise in mid-afternoon, TV thriller box ticking. So very heavy with family angst placed in the following configuration. The lead is female so eldest child (of two obviously) is female. Father is ineffectual/inattentive/distracted by financial issues. Lead is a mature student so daughter has mother role to second, family sex balanced, child. The argument which gets the family into the hands of the bad guy is over the mother's lack of mothering skills. Mother acts weak and whiny until she finds her inner mother's instinct (and the father arrives to add moral support/slightly saves the day
).
Of course, this sort of thing works fine if a) the lead character wasn't such an annoying idiot, and b) the lead character wasn't such an annoying idiot.
The acting throughout isn't bad (apart from the aforementioned), but the writing of the lead character is pretty awful. Made more so by the fact that the writing for the daughter and the bad guy is considerably better - relatively for a TV movie*, obviously.
Mind you the writing of the story isn't any great shakes to start with. I think they were trying to tie together some kind of statement of the loss of good manners and lack of strength as a family leads to the complete breakdown of society, unless some yada yada yada.... I don't know, if the father - who walked to the mall to save his family (before they needed it) slowly, and in a mildly brain damaged fashion - and the mother had some sort of epiphany I didn't see it.
But,
this is getting unnecessarily long. So CN's bit:
I'm assuming that Blackout was not a very popular TV movie because if it was I'm not sure, after this, how anyone could think CN playing bad is a remotely surprising thing. This is a character who has a quiet (and then very noisy) insanity about him. It's an interesting role as a precursor to Speck, since it is fairly straight down the line bad guy.
Not deeply written as a character, but with a solid motivation that CN, as always, sells well. At least he's in this a decent amount. Although mostly in the dark.
Overall, Blackout is neither very good, or particularly awful. Standard TV movie fare, and watchable if you don't think too hard (and don't mind irritating leads). CN has a good role, and his character's motivation explanation - it's not worth being nice - is understandable, even if his fix is a little out there.
But I'd suggest Summer of Fear if you want a CN family in peril movie, and Speck for your CN bat-crap insane bad guy.
Other thoughts:
Jane Seymour, Teeny Woman.
What happened to the woman behind the till? She was standing right there...
But why would you send pictures?
Why is the father standing around watching the downfall of society when it means his family is possibly going to be in some danger?
Yeah, like that plastic gate is really going to keep people out.
Nice glasses.
Horrible coat.
And no, I don't remember the names of any of the characters.
*why doesn't "movie" exist in Firefox's** dictionary? I know I make up a few words, but I'm sure I haven't just made that up.
**ha ha, nor does Firefox.
Now I wanted to keep this review fairly short because, to be fair, I didn't give Blackout my full attention for the majority of it. Although, frankly, I didn't need to.
After all, how many brain cells do you need to watch your standard woman in peril flick? Less than the lead character... and that really isn't many.
I think I could call this review spoiler-free simply on the basis that everything, seriously everything, is signposted in the first five/ten minutes. The long and the short of it is; It's raining up a storm, there is badly written and acted segment of "OMG power blackout inevitable!" (during which, incidentally, all I could think was "you know, city power supply is designed in a grid system. Just shut down a few blocks for a couple of hours and you won't overload the entire grid. Numbnuts."), dysfunctional family minus dad runs errands, bumps into CN's nutter, is dysfunctional during blackout, bumps into CN's deranged psycho, becomes functional, beats CN's man with minor flaw in interpersonal skills.
Blackout is an exercise in mid-afternoon, TV thriller box ticking. So very heavy with family angst placed in the following configuration. The lead is female so eldest child (of two obviously) is female. Father is ineffectual/inattentive/distracted by financial issues. Lead is a mature student so daughter has mother role to second, family sex balanced, child. The argument which gets the family into the hands of the bad guy is over the mother's lack of mothering skills. Mother acts weak and whiny until she finds her inner mother's instinct (and the father arrives to add moral support/slightly saves the day
).Of course, this sort of thing works fine if a) the lead character wasn't such an annoying idiot, and b) the lead character wasn't such an annoying idiot.
The acting throughout isn't bad (apart from the aforementioned), but the writing of the lead character is pretty awful. Made more so by the fact that the writing for the daughter and the bad guy is considerably better - relatively for a TV movie*, obviously.
Mind you the writing of the story isn't any great shakes to start with. I think they were trying to tie together some kind of statement of the loss of good manners and lack of strength as a family leads to the complete breakdown of society, unless some yada yada yada.... I don't know, if the father - who walked to the mall to save his family (before they needed it) slowly, and in a mildly brain damaged fashion - and the mother had some sort of epiphany I didn't see it.
But,
this is getting unnecessarily long. So CN's bit:I'm assuming that Blackout was not a very popular TV movie because if it was I'm not sure, after this, how anyone could think CN playing bad is a remotely surprising thing. This is a character who has a quiet (and then very noisy) insanity about him. It's an interesting role as a precursor to Speck, since it is fairly straight down the line bad guy.
Not deeply written as a character, but with a solid motivation that CN, as always, sells well. At least he's in this a decent amount. Although mostly in the dark.
Overall, Blackout is neither very good, or particularly awful. Standard TV movie fare, and watchable if you don't think too hard (and don't mind irritating leads). CN has a good role, and his character's motivation explanation - it's not worth being nice - is understandable, even if his fix is a little out there
. But I'd suggest Summer of Fear if you want a CN family in peril movie, and Speck for your CN bat-crap insane bad guy.
Other thoughts:
Jane Seymour, Teeny Woman.
What happened to the woman behind the till? She was standing right there...
But why would you send pictures?
Why is the father standing around watching the downfall of society when it means his family is possibly going to be in some danger?
Yeah, like that plastic gate is really going to keep people out.
Nice glasses.
Horrible coat.
And no, I don't remember the names of any of the characters.
*why doesn't "movie" exist in Firefox's** dictionary? I know I make up a few words, but I'm sure I haven't just made that up.
**ha ha, nor does Firefox.
Could you point me in the right direction?
, but I don't see it happening.
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