Josh (Fintan McKeown) lives in a Russian city where a nuclear plant is present. In fact, he is an engineer at the facility while his ex-wife is a scientist there as well. Josh made plenty of mistakes as a husband and dad and, therefore, lives separately from his ex and two teenage kids. The two children have issues as well, for the son longs for a motorcycle, which his mother forbids, and the daughter is rebellious, too. One day, all Hades breaks loose, as an earthquake hits the region. The teenage girl, who skipped school, ends up on damaged bus, unable to leave a wounded teacher from her school. Most importantly, the nuclear plant is severely hurt, losing its precious cooling water supply. A meltdown may occur but Josh and the other plant operators are temporarily stymied about how to prevent the worst case scenario. In addition, the couple is worried about their missing children! Will a solution be found in time and the family reunited? This isn't the worst disaster flick of all time but its not great, either. None of the actors are well known and the script is cliché ridden, even down to an evil, conniving plant employee. But, for all that, it is still watchable, intriguing enough to entice its audience to stay with it until the resolution is known. So, if you are a fan of disaster and survival type movies, you might give it a go.

Ho-Dee-Ho, what should I have expected? I bought this TV drama on DVD for under 5 dollars so could I be disappointed, really? No, I wasn't and I'm afraid the standard low brow for midget minds situational disaster flick formula is in force here.A family with teenage kids. The daughter looks like a slut, but so what? An improbable situation, a divorced American family in Russia, where Dad is an engineer, but his wife appears to have most of the smarts.What can be said formula take over. Family divorced, and kids think Mom was a douche bag for divorcing Pop. We never learn why they were divorced or why the kids and ex are in Russia to begin with.No matter an earthquake strikes where golly, you would think, the Russians would think maybe it wouldn't. Dumb Russies.The rest is pablum for a 90 minute occasional glance at the screen to be sure your movie smeller didn't predict way ahead how it would end.The brave young and arrogant 17 year old heart throb, the Artie- terribly trashy looking daughter, the very smart Mom who immediately sees a circuit board needs resistors bypassed with her cast off wedding ring.Oh, well, you'll find this flick plays well and probably isn't a total disaster if you buy the DVD for under 3 dollars. I want a partial refund on what I paid.

I was surprised to note that the film was released in 2004; it has a very "1960's" European feel in look and soundtrack. None of the supposedly US characters looks or sounds American; the hairstyles and clothes, again, are very retro and much of the dialog appears to have been looped--without the appropriate background noise! None of this would matter if the conflicts or characters were involving--but the action is very formulaic and the acting poor.It certainly is difficult to come up with new approaches to disaster-type scenarios on limited budgets, but "China Syndrome" and countless earthquake films have already been done. As the Bible--and Spielberg in his Oscar acceptance speech--said: "In the beginning was the word..." With or without a significant budget, there first needs to be decent script, and this one just doesn't work. If the creators of Mystery Theater 3000 were still doing their magic, this film would be a perfect candidate for parody.

To repeat, Someone got a hold of many of the special effect earthquake sequences from the film "Dantes PeaK" and splotched them into this overly long, odd, hybrid Three Mile Island/ Chernobyle rip off disaster movie. Not only are the sequences of freeway collapses and car crashes from "Peak", but many of the disintegrating brick and plaster buildings shown cracking and crashing about sure look like buildings from the town of Dantes Peak used in the film "Peak". I thought is mighty odd, but using my DVD unit to view these scenes frame by frame, one reads English on the signs plunging into the street, not Russian as they should, because this film is supposed to be set in a Russian government town in Siberia! At the end of this film the credits don't clarify anything. The film is Canadian made, and some of the shots of the Russian town looked to be filmed say, in Romania or maybe Poland. Somewhere in the old Soviet Union at least due to the Stalinist buildings and foreign auto plates. This film might have rated higher, say a 5 or a 6, if it had not been at and least 30 minutes shorter. Much can be said for brevity with a hackneyed plot line like this. You see, a new nuclear plant is ready to go online in Russia's Siberia ...... 100% power up. Gee, there is a large earth tremor....An American scientist is in charge of bringing the plant up to capacity.The scientist is a woman, with her two teenage kids in a school for foreign English speaking teenagers in the Company town in Siberia run by the Russians with American know how and technology. The Companies scientific headquarters are back in the states. The man who built this particular reactor is called upon to investigate cost overruns and is sent to the Russian town Oh I didn't tell you that the female American scientist and the guy who designed the reactor were separated and close to divorce? Gee there is another earth tremor..... Once disaster strikes this American family in Russia bad things start to happen. The mom and dad are both nuclear engineers or programmers or physicists, or some such. The high school kids are classic, The boy, a school cut up around 17, wants a motor bike and the girl, 15 and a goth, just wants away from her mom and her American School. GEE there is a BIG earthquake and the reactor looks like it is going into the China Syndrome and it's a race to unite the family and stop a nuclear disaster unparalleled in history. YAWN, YAWN AGAIN. It takes soooooo long for this to happen, you don't care about anything except, is this thing ever going to end? Pretty boring and what's with the jacked scenes from Dantes Peak?Not recommended