Generic in the extreme, Solar Attack is a standard fare disaster movie on a shoestring budget that can hardly be considered captivating. There’s no tension here, the threat feels ridiculous, and performances range from passable to well below par.
Mark Dacascos stars as the overly-rich scientist trying to convince a brain dead government that the end of the world is real. Minimal, unconvincing destruction is caused by a coronal mass ejection from the sun. It threatens to burn the oxygen from our atmosphere or blow up a few satellites. At any rate, it’s not a particularly unusual or interesting "end of the world" scenario, and the minor budget doesn’t allow for mass destruction.
Global warming is preached throughout as one of the main reasons for this situation. The largest result of the threat, the annihilation of an entire country, occurs completely off screen. The audience doesn’t even get some stock footage of cities burning to the ground.
A side plot, a Russian distrust of American politicians, is dated beyond all comprehension. Fake newscasts come off as that, incredibly cheap and unbelievable. A newscast this cheap would be pulled from the airwaves before going on the air.
The few effects shots are passable. Some decent shots of satellites crashing into Earth work fine, though the inevitable destruction isn’t anywhere near the level audiences expect from a disaster movie. This is boredom.
We’d all want Louis Gossett Jr. as president, but if it requires us to sit through Solar Attack to get there, forget it. Without the destruction level at the expected level and burdened with dialogue that's unbearably long and unnecessary, this show is a mess. You can find far better films out there to satisfy your urge for end of the world scenarios.
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Article comments
1 - Tony
This movie was a loose rip-off of the equally bad Irwin Allen "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" movie of 1961.