Remember Speed? You know, the movie about a bus that can’t
drop below 50 mph or it’ll blow up. Well
apply thermodynamics to that concept, invert it and you got Chill Factor. It’s about two down-on-their-luck Joes (Skeet
Ulrich (Chilly Dogs) and Cuba Gooding
Jr (Snow Dogs)) who need to keep a
chemical weapon cold enough so its temperature doesn’t go above 50 degrees Fahrenheit or it’ll explode catastrophically. Jeez talk about a blatant rip off. I mean come on guys, you couldn’t even change
the temperature number to something other than 50?
But really at its heart this is a Shane Black knock off more
than anything. You have a white guy
(Skeet) and a black guy (Cuba) teaming up reluctantly to stop the bad guy, lots
of jokes and shenanigans between the two leads stemming from the fact that
they’re stuck in a shitty situation together, a high tension concept involving
selling weapons on the black market and a weak main villain. What’s missing is this doesn’t take place
during Christmas or in California (Montana is the setting here which is
different), the mains aren’t cops or private investigators and the plot isn’t
so jammed full of ideas that it has trouble getting all of them out. But overall the filmmakers did a pretty damn
good job capturing the Shane Black vibe so at least on that level: mission
accomplished.
And because the movie actually builds a solid foundation for
itself the rest becomes easy to digest. At
every turn I kept being surprised at how much fun this little piece was. And it does feel a little like Speed because Skeet and Cuba not only
need to keep the weapon on ice but they also need to get to a certain military
base where they can drop the thing off.
So the constant threat and constant mobility really keep shit moving
along. Oh and a lunatic colonel (Peter
Firth (Lifeforce)) and his team are
after the weapon so there’s that too.
One thing though is the action isn’t as smooth as if a
veteran crew were handling this (more on that in a minute). Some of the deaths are particularly nasty
like Skeet and a henchman are fighting on top of a moving truck and the
henchman isn’t paying attention so he bashes his head against a jutted out rock
formation. Or another bad guy rappels
down in front of the same truck firing away hoping he’ll kill Skeet and Cuba. Only our heroes don’t swerve out of the
way. Instead this bastard’s plan goes
completely sideways and he gets smashed to shit like a piñata. It’s true these are inelegant deaths (as
opposed to a cleaner gunshot to the chest or similar) but it’s that they hit
hard with the way they’re shot and edited.
After surviving each death defying encounter Skeet and Cuba
belt out a “woooo!” or an “alright!” and that gets very annoying. The filmmakers must’ve thought “this is
totally what the audience will be thinking or doing out loud themselves so
let’s give it to ‘em”. That was a
mistake. Once is fine but every time is
way too much. I know our guys are glad
to still be alive but they kinda come off like they’re almost happy about
killing all of these people. Almost.
And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the beautiful
poetic justice end that comes to the main villain. Spoilers. Ok well right before that Skeet has to take
care of the last henchman (henchwoman actually) and she’s got a gun on him and
says “don’t worry I’m a professional, this won’t hurt a bit”. Skeet’s reply is “well I’m an amateur and
this is gonna hurt like hell!” He then
kicks her in the groin and knees her in the face. Fuckin’ A man. I feel like this line has to have been used
before but I can’t think of any other movie where I’ve heard it. I definitely would’ve remembered that because
it’s so damn great. Anyway Skeet and the
mad colonel have their final fight, it looks like the colonel has the upper
hand and then Cuba comes up from behind and stabs the colonel in the chest with
the digital thermometer that they’ve been using to track the temperature of the
weapon with. It’s so perfect and matter-of-fact-ly
executed yet at the same time it never occurred to me that’s what’s going to
happen. Really nice job movie. But of course the colonel survives this
because we need the fatal blow to come from the weapon he wanted so badly and
pursued our protagonists all throughout the movie for. The sonuvabitch gets incinerated in a blaze
of, well, maybe not glory but extremely toxic flesh melting chemicals. What a way to end this sucker huh?
This was the only thing Drew Gitlin and Mike Cheda ever
wrote. Cheda produced a small handful of
movies but that’s it. This is also the
only thing Hugh Johnson ever directed. He
was Ridley Scott’s cinematographer on White
Squall and G.I. Jane and second
unit director on 1492: Conquest of
Paradise. That’s mostly it
though. Skeet too was a strange choice
as he wasn’t an action movie guy or had played the lead in anything. Cuba had more of a resume with starring in Boyz n the Hood and winning a fucking
Oscar for Jerry Maguire. Even still he wasn’t thought of as a leading
man. Most of these folks didn’t have a
ton of experience and this was a major Hollywood action picture. Well I’m glad they rolled the dice on them.
Honestly I was dreading going into this revisit (I’m one of
the few that saw this in theaters in ‘99) but the stars kind of aligned and
this was such a fun time. These
relatively low budget A pictures are underdogs I can root for, sorta like John Wick: Chapter 2 and how much I
loved that. They need to go out there
and prove they can play with the big boys and Chill Factor comes real close.
There are undeniably elements of B movie schlock (the plot for instance)
but there’s enough other good stuff that it makes the cheaper parts seem
charming. This picture can chill with me
any day. Give it a whirl.
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