Darby

What the script appears to say: "Oh, you have a billion dollar one of a kind experimental aircraft that just went online? I'm a raging alcoholic who used to be an Air Force pilot and I flew experimental aircraft. Therefore I'm perfectly qualified to fly this aircraft even though I've never spent one second in the classroom studying it's systems, never spent one second in the simulator and never had a check ride with a check pilot to qualify me on type. Ah-ha. I understand. You have a list of pilots. Let me add to that list my best friend who used to fly with me. Like me he's never had one second of training on type." Right. How about the chief test pilot for the program? Might that person be qualified to make the flight? If you're going to produce a military influenced sci-fi why not attempt to keep it believable military sci-fi rather than some 12 year old's fantasy? PS: And the proper short hard for science fiction is "sci-fi", not "SyFy". "SyFy" is the copyrighted short hand name for a specific TV channel, The Science Fiction Network. After reading the vast majority of reviews here it no longer amazes me just how awful the script writing is for this show. The script writers and reviewers all seem to be cut from the same generation - the generation of mobile phone texting. None of them appear to have learned how to write in complete, logical, grammatically correct sentences or how to link sentences into complete paragraphs. Oy vey!

I watched Episode 1 and that's all I needed to or could watch. The NCIS franchise is a military law enforcement procedural series set in different cities. The emphasis is, of course, on entertainment. But aside from entertainment the series focuses on procedure. This show, however, went for cliche over procedure. The first episode pits NCIS against Australia's federal law enforcement which begins the cliches: the US Navy owns Australia, the NCIS female lead has to measure pee-pees with the male Australian commander through cliche tough guy banter, the evil US military colonel from the deep state steals evidence to cover up - something (it isn't resolved in episode 1), the US Navy leaves a lone petty officer standing security wile the entire crew abandons a $5 billion nuclear submarine, the lone petty officer is an enlisted person thus an idiot and takes a call from someone he doesn't know who orders him to allow our heroes to enter the abandoned sub contrary to the petty officer's standing orders, evil James Bond movie baddies take control of said abandoned nuke boat, the US Navy has no security posted which allows our heroes to enter a US aircraft carrier and steal a helicopter so they can do the obligatory helicopter chase to try to capture the baddies as they escape on a RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) which blows up for some unexplained reason. Boy, oh boy. Did this inspire me to watch Episode 2 or what? Yep. It's "Or what". I won't be watching episode 2 and I don't believe the series will be having a Series 2.

The casting of this film missed by a mile. Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Abbie Cornish are touted as OK to pretty good actors. Then in this film they are cast as co-leads with Anthony Hopkins. I don't know what casting directors Deborah Aquila and Tricia Wood were thinking by casting Morgan and Cornish against Hopkins. The result of the miss casting simply showed that both were in way over their heads. Watching Hopkins flow through scenes as a true thespian while, especially Cornish, struggled to keep up was cringe worthy. She appeared to be intimidated by Hopkins' abilities and it showed up in her delivery. Morgan with his day old beard, frumpy clothing and out-of-shape body just looked completely out of place for FBI special agent. Had he been cast as a homeless alcoholic his look would have been more appropriate. The look and wooden delivery were less than spectacular. The poor performances of two of the three lead actors turned an interesting underlying story with real potential to be great fantasy/sci-fi into a "saw it last evening and can't remember it today" flop. In summary, after watching this disaster, it is no surprise that the film's US release was direct to cable rather than being shown in theaters (to be honest it did see a 1 week very limited release in US theaters in 2016).

A decent techno-thriller with some glaring problems. It's a huge stretch for the main character to have the talent and skill that she is given by the writers as she is a college freshman and the scope of the first season is about 9 days. She's a pre-med major who, on the second day of college, is doing complete DNA sequencing and running experiments in the department head's lab before she even knows where the restrooms are. Second year grad student, maybe. Freshman, never. The department head doing freshman class lectures? No. The TA does that. The series is supposed to be a high adventure - high danger serious thriller. The three comedy characters were completely out of place.

It was like a novel, in a movie, in a movie, in a movie...rushed into production, confused and boring. Whoa. It's like its self- review in the movie itself. And with at this time 20 reviews up the top of the box says 86% like this movie. But of the 20 reviews, 6 are thumbs down and 3 more have no rating but the review is very negative. That's 45% don't like. And Will Poulter "steps back from Twitter" for mental health reasons because the film is being panned? Grow up, kid. You're 25 years old, supposed to be a pro and films do get bad reviews - this one for good reason. It's a stinker.