dj_oldfield-3
This movie met all of my expectations. While it is certainly not something that I would have gone to a movie theater to see, I believe that it offers an enjoyable use of a couple hours.Since pretty much everyone before me has been ragging on it, I suppose I should say my piece.1. Dean Cain, while not in the Brad Pitt/Morgan Freeman category of actors, does offer a pretty solid character in most of his roles and this (in my view) is no exception. I think that his mannerisms were pretty natural considering he may as well have been sharing a row-boat with badger for how safe he was.2. A lot of people felt that the snake was poorly done, and perhaps they had higher definition on their TVs (which wouldn't surprise me). The scenes with this snake are very short and not very frequent. As far as problems, I would say that the biggest one is that somehow the scenes made the snake look smaller then it was suppose to be (comparing them against the size of the hole it made in a wall). The snake looked to me to be about three or four feet wide, and the hole in the wall was at least six feet in diameter (probebly more like eight).Sub Note: The movie indicates that this snake makes a tunnel through ice that is roughly wide enough for two grown men to walk through side by side, and is about 30 paces long. My imagination cannot accept that as a possibility (even a drill would take a very long time to force through that much ice), and that did kind of weaken the plot for me.3. Pretty much all of these characters are undeveloped. I am guessing that this became apparent to the director at some point, because there are poorly timed arguments between the two co-stars which were (in my view) an unsuccessful attempt at giving them substance beyond the monster experience.When I am going to watch a movie about a giant snake, I am basically more concerned with his eating habits then the character development. I suppose this is a large part of the reason that I enjoyed this movie, and a large part of the reason that it achieved a 7/10 from me.
cyberent
Anybody who sees this film expecting the second coming of Citizen Kane is fooling themselves. Folks, it's just a movie meant to entertain us. And in that sense, I think it did a fine job. Sure there were holes in the plot and some mediocre CG effects, but overall it didn't do too badly in my book. My main gripes were in the opening scene. So if I'm flying a giant cargo plane and it starts making funny noises, I'm certainly not going to open up the crates. And that CG snake is pretty badly done. Why a snake? A monkey would have been more convincing, and most importantly, monkeys make us laugh! I was impressed with the set design though. Very effective use of set design to give us the sense of claustrophobia. The main control room was quite a contrast to the rest of the cold blocky hallways. Overall, not a bad job, especially from the typical giant snake movie. Faced between Anaconda or Boa at the video stores, I'd take Boa in a heartbeat.
spd916
The movie is best described as any typical poorly produced horror type movie where the characters will do the stupidest things to get themselves killed for no reason (eg.-walking into places knowing that you'll be killed or not taking anyones obvious warnings). The acting itself was not bad but the movie doesn't make much sense as to how a giant snake can move around the prison but can't really be seen until at least the last 45 minutes of the film. Some scenes were just written poorly. for example, dean cain promises a prisoner her safety when she was freaking out about the snake eating her and 5 minutes later, all he did was shoot her (but not the snake) so she wouldn't have to deal with the pain of being eaten... I guess that's still keeping his word. I'm no animal expert but this snake goes around this prison eating a bunch of people...don't snakes eat and then go hide and sleep it off since they're most vulnerable when they are full?? I don't think it's even worth the time watching this film. if dean cain would show some skin, perhaps it's still worth the rental.
Neonsamurai
If I was going to build a maximum-security prison I'd build it in Slough, that way the convicts would be safer inside the jail and not try to escape.But does the American government ever listen to me? No they don't and shame on them! I've emailed George Bush at least a dozen times with my plans for a coal powered time machine and get NO response. If you're reading this George, when I've got it working I'm going back in time and punching a few extra holes in Al Gores cards! I know he'd listen!But I digress. Anyway you shouldn't build a maximum-security prison in Antarctica because everybody knows there are snakes trapped under the ice there that are 100ft long. But the American government ignores common sense and does it anyway. When will they learn? I mean I saw the plan that they came up with in Deep Impact to stop the comet (which was laughable) and their attempt to capture the Predator in Predator 2 was weak at best, so who comes up with these ideas?Anyway things go wrong, which I could have told them was going to happen, and a giant snake (surprise, surprise) starts eating people. Luckily Dean Cain shows up. At this point I was pretty sure that everyone was doomed, but plucky Dean and his wife manage to outsmart the snake and save everybody. Well, maybe not everybody. Actually it's just themselves, but the other people were criminals so they deserved death. So my embiggened marking systems records Boa (as it is called in the UK) as having achieved 7 Gi-ants (which is a combination of two words giant and ants. Gi-ants. Clever eh?) which is a universally acknowledged as being good. The name is accurate and there are some reasonable costumes.