September 1, 1999 | Chill Factor is a tepid thriller that got lost on its way to the video store, and inexplicably ended up on megaplex screens. First-time feature filmmaker Hugh Johnson, a former director of TV commercials, tries to keep things loud and lively with high-speed chases, fiery explosions and, of course, astonishingly poor marksmanship by bad guys armed with automatic weapons. The noise may keep you from dozing off, but just barely.
After a tediously long prologue, in which a chemical-weapons experiment goes horribly wrong on a South Pacific atoll, Chill Factor gets down to business in the tiny community of Jerome, Montana. David Paymer plays Dr. Richard Long, the scientist whose fatal miscalculation in the opening sequence leads to the deaths of 18 relatively innocent bystanders. Ten years later, the guilt-racked Long still is trying to make amends. At a top-secret research facility in Big Sky Country, he seeks a way to neutralize the substance – code-named Elvis – that can kill every living thing within hundreds of miles of its activation.
Enter Andrew Brynner (a snarly Peter Firth), the disgraced ex-Army officer who took the fall for Long’s failed experiment. Newly discharged from prison, Brynner wants payback. He leads a small band of mercenaries into the research facility – which, in typical action-movie fashion, is only slightly better guarded than a convenience store – to steal a canister of the dreadful chemical weapon. After the shooting stops, however, Brynner finds that Elvis has left the building.
Fatally wounded, Long staggers off to the local diner where Tim Mason (Skeet Ulrich), a hunky drifter who just happens to be Long’s fishing buddy, works the late-night shift. Long gives Mason a frozen container of the toxic substance, and warns his young buddy that, if Elvis warms to a temperature over 50 degrees, very bad things will happen. Arlo (Cuba Gooding Jr.), the driver of a refrigerated ice-cream truck, arrives on the scene just in time to be drafted into service by Mason. The two unlikely heroes set out for a military base more than 90 miles way – with, naturally, Brynner and his cohorts in hot pursuit.
(Speaking of those cohorts: Is there some kind of EEOC mandate that requires contemporary filmmakers to strike a multiracial, multigender balance when casting villainous henchmen? Just asking.)
Ulrich gives a competent but charisma-free performance as Mason, the kind of tissue-thin character that remains a cipher without a generous boost of star power. Gooding goes a bit too far in the other direction, ranting and wisecracking with all the overbearing energy of an actor determined to spice up a bland B-movie through sheer force of will. Even so, Gooding’s bug-eyed, motor-mouth shtick is good for a few welcome laughs. (He brings just the right spin to Arlo’s off-hand description of Elvis as “weed-killer on steroids.”) Ulrich brings a lot less to the table, even when Mason is meant to make a play for audience sympathy by recalling the unpleasant aftermath of a DWI misadventure.
Screenwriters Drew Gitlin and Mike Cheda shamelessly recycle elements from a dozen or so other movies – everything from recent hits (Speed, Broken Arrow) to a revered French classic (The Wages of Fear) – but the stitching isn’t seamless. In fact, there are so many holes in the plot that Mason could use the script to drain spaghetti back at the diner. You might amuse yourself during Chill Factor by keeping track of the times when our heroes could easily pull off the road and phone the state police, the National Guard or even the regional branch of the FBI for help. You might amuse yourself even more by skipping the movie altogether and doing your laundry.
