Skyfire movie review

RATING: PG-13

LENGTH: 97 minutes

Movie Review Mom GRADE: C

IN A NUTSHELL:

You may have noticed a lot of Chinese influence in movies lately because Hollywood has been trying to tap into the HUGE Chinese market. This fun action movie is a collaboration between Screen Media and a Chinese film company, Tau Films, that would love to make it big in the American market. The movie is directed by British filmmaker Simon West who also brought us Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Con Air among other action flicks.

Imagine blending Jurassic Park with Dante’s Peak and then add a few hot peppers from Sichuan, China and you get a disaster movie that features a resort built on an erupting volcano!

TIPS FOR PARENTS:

The movie is in Chinese, so you have to read a lot of subtitles quickly.
Lots of destruction
Very high body count with some blood
People in very dangerous situations

THEMES:

The power of Mother Nature
Greed
Humanity
Family
Working together
Listening to others

THINGS I LIKED:

I love China and have traveled there many times for business and pleasure. One of my sons also fell in love with China and married a beautiful girl from Hong Kong! They’re expecting their first baby! If anyone can build such a remarkable structure as this giant “theme park” over a volcano, it would be the Chinese.
Lots of non-stop action that could get your heart pumping if you watched this movie on a big screen in a theater with a great sound system.
Most American audiences will only recognize one actor: British Jason Isaacs who can always be counted on to play a ruthless villain. I loved his performances in The Patriot (one of my all-time favorite movies) and, of course, as Lucius Malfoy in all of the Harry Potter films. Other lead actors in this movie are Xueqi Wang, Hannah Quinlivan, Shawn Dou, An Bai, Lingchen Ji, and Liang Shi.
Great theme music
Some of the special effects are good. Others are terrible.
It made me laugh every time the Chinese lab guy yelled in English, “Yes!”
During the rolling credits at the end, you get to see footage of how they filmed the movie, as well as watch a music video of a Chinese band.
There really isn’t much humor to balance out the drama and destruction.
Fun fact: The movie was actually filmed not in China but in beautiful Malaysia.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

You can tell the Chinese have tried to follow the American blockbuster formula for disaster movies, but this one just didn’t quite get there. Still, if you get a kick out of disaster movies, it’ll do for now. It’s basically a bunch of good-looking Millennials and GenZ’ers who save the day by dumb luck.
It makes absolutely no sense that one parent would survive the volcano in the beginning of the movie and the other one didn’t when they were just yards apart when it hit. Even worse, who would build a resort on a volcano that killed so many people? Even worse still, what kind of crazies would pay to stay at a resort on the edge of a volcano like that? The premise is pretty ridiculous. Most of the scenarios are absolutely laughable.
Because most of the CGI is pretty bad, you don’t often feel like the characters are in real danger. The green screen effect makes the action sequences look super cheap and cheesy.
There’s a super awkward kiss between Mr. & Mrs. Harris which makes the actors look like actors playing a role. It’s really hard to connect with the characters. It’s also hard to really connect with the characters because I was so busy reading subtitles for the majority of the movie. You can engage with the details of the action or read the subtitles, not both because the subtitles fly by so quickly.
Like in all disaster movies, there are many characters who make terrible decisions.
The movie takes itself way too seriously. Dramatic moments are mostly laughable.
Illogical escapes
Super cliched characters and plot points.
Some of the dialogue is really weak.
I found a YouTube video called “Tau Films: The Making of Skyfire (2019) to be almost more interesting than the film itself. You can watch it by click here.
There is a super cheesy romance side story that attempts to mimic the one in the volcano disaster movie Pompeii
There’s a cliched fake-out death scene that most viewers will see coming a mile away.