bkoganbing Poor Casper Van Dien, his career has slid a long way from Tarzan and Starship Troopers.In Meltdown he's a policeman who just happens to be dating TV reporter Stefanie Von Pfeten and her brother is a scientist who's trying to deal with a speeding comment headed for Earth. But in the runaway comet business, even a near miss causes some real problems as the Earth's orbit goes out of kilter.From the survival of the Earth we go to the survival of Van Dien and his immediate family. His daughter's gangbanger boyfriend, Ryan McDonell actually proves to be of some use especially when he suspects a guy he knows as a crooked cop might mean the Van Dien group a lot of harm.My only question here is, why didn't they have Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton and the rest of that crew to deal with the nasty comet?Pass this one up folks.

Michael O'Keefe MELTDOWN is pretty interesting SCI-FI. No major budget, very few special effects; but decent acting and a storyline of global doom is enough to sustain viewing. An asteroid grazes the atmosphere and thrust the Earth into an orbit closer to the sun. Global warming rapidly becomes unbearable. A determined LAPD cop(Casper Van Dien)goes all out to save the world from certain annihilation as the rising temps are devastating. The pressure is on to save mankind from this solar catastrophe; as well as protect his daughter, nurse ex-wife and TV reporter girlfriend. The cast includes: Stefanie Von Pfetten, Venus Terzo, Amanda Crew and Vincent Gale.

LadyLiberty Meltdown opens on a scene of scientists preparing to conduct an important test on a missile system developed to deflect asteroids should they be on a collision course with earth. Nathan (Vincent Gale) mentions some misgivings to his, but the test appears to be an unqualified success. Then the asteroid breaks apart, and the largest piece is pushed into a direct collision path with earth. Fortunately, the huge rock skips off of earth's outer atmosphere and ricochets into space. Unfortunately, the glancing blow is just enough to alter earth's orbit, and the planet begins to spiral closer to the sun.While all of this is going on above their heads, Los Angeles cops Tom (Casper Van Dien) and Mick (Greg Anderson) are on a stake-out. They're supposed to collect evidence against a suspected drug dealer, but the deal they're watching quickly devolves into a shooting match. Afterward, Tom takes a few minutes to be interviewed by a local television reporter who also happens to be his girlfriend, Carly (Stefanie von Pfetten).At a nearby hospital where Mick is treated for a minor injury, Tom has a brief chat with his ex-girlfriend Bonnie (Venus Terzo), who is a nurse. He tells her he's concerned about the fact that their 17 year-old daughter Kimberly (Amanda Crew) is dating a man named CJ (Ryan McDonell). Once Tom explains to Bonnie that he's discovered CJ has a criminal record, she's a little worried herself.It's not long, however, before everybody has something else to worry about. The temperature is rapidly rising all around the world. Carly is one of the first non-scientists to learn what's really happening. Nathan, who is her brother, calls her to say he may have a way that they can survive. Carly calls Tom; he, of course, promptly contacts Bonnie.In relatively short order, the motley group is on the road. Before they can reach their ultimate goal, however, they've got to make their way through bands of looters, deal with a catastrophic water shortage, and manage to travel in temperatures that are high enough to kill.Casper Van Dien is a good looking guy, and I actually enjoyed him in Starship Troopers. That may be because he's good in action scenes. It might also be because he didn't talk much in that movie. In Meltdown, he's unfortunately given just enough lines in situations that are just dramatic enough to showcase his entirely average acting abilities. Amanda Crew is also okay, and Ryan McDonell isn't bad, either. Vincent Gale and Stefanie von Pfetten are also both reasonably good, but Venus Terzo is sadly on a par with Van Dien.What really makes or breaks a movie, though, is the story and the script. While the story here is okay and actually has some real potential, the script is just awful. The science part of the science fiction is non-existent starting with the asteroid pushing the earth out of orbit and escalating with the notion that the "gravitational balance of the solar system" might "pull the earth back" into its usual orbit "over time." When the temperature in LA hits 120 degrees, cars start blowing up.You know what's even worse than the bad science? The bad continuity. Okay, really hot. Why are people in the movie not only wearing long sleeved shirts, but jackets, too? Why are people mugging each other for bottled water instead of turning on the taps at home? Why are the streets completely empty, but the freeways completely full? And why are the freeways full of unexploded? It's almost superfluous to note that the sets, costumes, and production values were good, especially when that only forces me to say that the edits were not.So basically, you take a pretty good story idea and combine it with mostly mediocre acting, a terrible script, low-end special effects, utterly irrational plot twists, and poor edits, and what do you have? A movie that's even less than the sum of its inconsiderable parts. I'm sorry to say that I can't recommend Meltdown: Days of Destruction to anyone.POLITICAL NOTES: There is mention here that Congress finally loosened the purse strings enough to fund the tests that start the movie rolling. While the tests here were wholly irresponsible (targeting an asteroid with a nuke and not knowing the composition of the big rock is, in fact, well beyond irresponsible and approaching the insane), the fact is that such scenarios are a very real danger to the planet. Unfortunately, we've tracked nowhere near all of the near earth asteroids that could be worrisome in some orbit some day; and our ability to spot something on a collision course with us is limited at best.Once we do discover we're going to be hit, we quite literally have no system in place to deal with it. There are no nuclear-tipped space missiles we can launch; the space shuttle is completely incapable of going beyond earth orbit, and if it were, we couldn't launch enough of them or launch them quickly enough for it to matter. I'm not big on the government doing anything beyond its constitutional mandates, but I certainly think protecting the planet from destruction coming at us from outer space could be construed as defending the country, don't you? FAMILY SUITABILITY: Meltdown: Days of Destruction is rated R for "some violence." I frankly didn't find the violence here anything beyond a fairly typical T-rated video game. If your teens are keen on seeing Meltdown and you can't talk them out of it, the R-rating shouldn't dissuade you from letting them see it. It's not, however, a good idea to leave the younger kids in the room with their elder siblings. While the shootings aren't too graphic in the main, some of the dead bodies are.

Crap_Connoisseur "Meltdown" is a disaster (tele)movie about really hot weather starring Casper Van Dien. That one sentence is probably enough to make most people run for cover but as a disaster movie devotee and long suffering fan of Mr Van Dien, I found "Meltdown" pretty irresistible.You could drive a semi-trailer through the holes in the film's plot. In short, scientists fire a nuclear weapon into a meteor with the intention of developing a meteor defence program. However, instead of fragmenting, a large chunk of the rock heads towards earth only to be deflected. Unfortunately, the near miss manages to push the earth out of orbit, dragging it towards the sun and resulting in really hot weather.Casper plays Tom, a police officer, who attempts to save his family and new girlfriend from the heatwave and protect them from the looters who have taken over the city. This synopsis actually makes the film sound more interesting than it is. In reality, most of the film involves sweaty people walking around looking for water. Strangely, it never enters anyone's head to turn on a tap or purchase a beverage from a vending machine. Things get a bit more exciting towards the end of the film when rogue policemen capture the brother of Tom's new girlfriend. This at least gives Casper the opportunity to wrap a shirt around his head and shoot a gun.The extent to which you will enjoy "Meltdown" surely depends on your view of Van Dien. Personally, I find something deeply hypnotic about Casper's cheesy, square jawed persona and his determination to appear in trashy, straight-to-TV action thrillers. He reminds me of Zoolander with guns. Despite my appreciation for Casper's body of telemovie work, I would still like to see him make the occasional film that actually gains a cinematic release.In addition to Casper's stunning acting performance, further "Meltdown" highlights include a couple of exploding cars, a bad CGI meteor and some hilariously improbable science. The other actors in the film are all competent, with Venus Terzo a standout as Tom's first love, Bonnie. Amanda Crew also makes an impression as Tom's daughter.