Saturday, November 3, 2012

Nature Unleashed: Avalanche (2004)

Brothers Thom and Jock, who run a snowmobile tour company, take a couple of vacationers who are loose canons to the mountains.  The idiots ignore the brothers instructions and immediately cause a small avalanche.  Everyone in town blames the brothers, even though they tried to stop the rogue tourists.

A luxury hotel is being built near the slopes and an avalanche expert wants the hotel shut down as she says they are poised for a Super Avalanche!  But the grand opening of the hotel is in a week so they will not evacuate the slopes.

The avalanche expert hires the brothers to take her up the mountain where she checks the likelihood of an avalanche.  She accomplishes this by putting her ear to the ground, eating some snow and falling head first into a crevasse.  Yup, definitely the signs of a Super Avalanche.

This movie might best be described as Jaws set in the mountains.The expert is fixated on warning the town. But  everyone is more concerned about the grand opening of the hotel.  And why is she so intent, practically obsessed, with avalanche warnings?  She clues us in by ripping off her boot to show us that an avalanche took her toes!

We had a great time watching this due to the many ridiculous lines, strange dubbing, and obviously fake avalanche - which appears to be someone off camera throwing fake snow at people on screen.  There are also shots of ice cracking, CGI snow, people in town watching the avalanche coming at them rather than running, and most importantly, snow that growls.

At one point, rescuers head up the mountain to help people caught in the slide.  One brother hangs upside down in a hole (does he really need to be upside down?).  There are six guys up there so it doesn't seem the best use of a rescue team to have one guy digging upside down in a hole with the others watching.


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