Disastrous!
Karl E. Weaver | California, USA | 02/16/2010
(1 out of 5 stars)
"I watched this film followed by "Polar Storm" (see my other review) just warming up for the DVD release of "2012".
Nowhere in the blurbs I read did it say this is a GERMAN movie. German actors and
actresses, filmed in Germany, dialog in German, all the text on screen is German. All they did for the DVD release is dub it over in English. This leads to several problems. There is NO subtitling. So the entire film you're forced to watch the actors and actresses mouth words which do NOT match the words you are hearing. This is disconcerting and annoying. Second (third, if you count lack of subtitles) although the English voiceover is decent, the translation is awkward at times. Some of the language is so obviously "German translated into English", not what someone in the US would have said....
Besides those problems, the whole plot theme simply was not believable to me. We are supposed to believe that lake water flowing into a series of mine tunnels is so devastating that resulting collapse of ground could swallow up an entire hospital full of patients or, even worse, a large "football" (soccer) stadium with maybe 60,000 people watching a game. Wow, that was a REALLY BIG MINE, huh? Funny how a small band could go from aboveground to the center, save the day, and get back out again, all in the course of a day (before the sun set, even!). They could have made a more realistic plot like miners trapped in the mine--something that happens multiple times every year and is gripping enough-but they just lost my credulity with the plot. On top of that all the personal relationships that are supposed to make the story more appealing--don't. They seem so trite, stereotyped and overworked, they simply fail to interest me. I don't even CARE who is willing to kill to protect how they screwed up before, who is whose ex-husband, or which guy and girl are going to get married, and so on. The best I can say is the filming is decent, and the acting is--fair. If you want a grade-B disaster film read the other movie review; I think it's somewhat more interesting."