Rent Skyfire (2019)

Bored with talky dramas? Wallow in this terrific disaster movie - Skyfire review by Alphaville

China’s first full-on big-screen disaster movie and director Simon West’s best film for ages. The plot? Forget it. This is all-out action at a tourist resort on a gorgeous Pacific island with an exploding volcano. When it’s as well done as this, what more do you need? Even more exotically for Western audiences, it’s mostly in subtitled Chinese with no dubbed-for-morons option. Not that there’s much dialogue or that any of it matters. After some brief character set-up the lean 90min runtime is chock full of action.

The short runtime was caused by production problems that left a story gap concerning the flooding of a village, but that doesn’t detract from the viewing experience. This is what an escapist disaster movie should be. The colourful set-pieces are silly, OTT and brilliantly realised, resulting in stunts that are both exciting and fun. There are many ‘How can they get out of this’ moments. It’s spectacular, it has great special effects, it’s a ride.

Lacklustre Disaster Film - Skyfire review by GI

China's first big budget effects movie, a disaster film with a childish script, flatly drawn characters and effects that are somewhat lacklustre. In the UK the British Board of Film Classification set this at a 12 certificate and for this film you need to be under that age for this to mean anything. Meng Li (Hannah Quinliven) is a young volcanologist based on an island with an active volcano that erupted years before killing her mother. For reasons that cannot be fathomed a smarmy entrepreneur has been allowed to build a resort on the island and gives tours into the volcano to rich tourists. He's played by Jason Isaacs with a dodgy South African accent (maybe they thought this would make him even more sleazy) who ignores warnings that an eruption is imminent. The film doesn't wait around to build up much tension because it erupts fairly quickly and then its a simple case of lots of running away and nearly dying for the main characters and death to all the extras. Quinliven makes for a decent action hero but her character is a sort of Alicia Vikander Lara Croft rip off. There's lots of quite daft set pieces and overall it'll make you groan and chortle in equal measure.