The Triangle

March 27, 2006

Rated: NR Runtime: 255 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Sometimes in life you are either disappointed or pleasantly surprised. Most of the time, however, things do actually happen much as you expect them to. This is what experience gives us - the ability to predict how something will turn out. So it was with the Sci-Fi Channel original DVD mini-series “The Triangle”.

The Triangle If you only look at the people behind this effort, you would tend to expect something quite good. Co-writers Bryan Singer, Dean Devlin and Rockne S. O’Bannon all have decent-to-exceptional projects in their respective pasts. As well, many of the actors have quite a track record. Specifically, Sam Neill, Eric Stoltz and Lou Diamond Phillips are well established. As well, Catherine Bell is a talented veteran of both TV and the movies. It also doesn’t hurt that she’s hotter than a 2-dollar whore on Saturday night!

But you need to look deeper. Tapped to direct this project was Craig R. Baxley. “Who?!?”, you might ask. Good question. Let me jog your memory for you. Baxley is a former stunt man and stunt coordinator who broke into directing. We have him to thank for such memorable…things such as Action Jackson, I Come In Peace, Stone Cold (starring Brian Bosworth!), and Sniper II. He’s no Uwe Boll, but he’s also not Martin Scorcese either.

All in all, I figured this would be a fairly safe, watchable, but unmemorable show…and I was dead on with my prediction. So much so, in fact, that right after it was over, I dashed right out to buy a lottery ticket.

The story starts out with a very intriguing opening sequence involving Christopher Columbus as he traveled through the Bermuda Triangle. Soon after we’re treated to another eye-opening scene with Phillips’ character involving a boat he’s piloting for Greenpeace and the whaling ship they are harassing. Then out of the blue comes billionaire Eric Benirall (Neill). He is quite the eccentric sort and he has called together four people with very specific skills in order to pay them LUDICROUS amounts of money to find out what makes the Bermuda Triangle tick. There is a trouble-making deep sea oil rig engineer (Bell), a washed up tabloid reporter (Stoltz), a washed up psychic (Davison), and an extreme sports loving meteorologist (Michael Rodgers). This rag-tag group then sets out to discover the truth behind the mystery that is the triangle.

It was a promising start but, alas, it runs out of steam pretty quickly. There is a pretty annoying and mostly unnecessary sub-plot involving Phillips’ character and, as the mysteries are revealed, everything quickly loses its luster and becomes rather mundane (as sci-fi goes). But I was ok with that since Ms. Bell is the hottest MILF I’ve ever laid eyes on. Every scene she is in is a scene that I only half paid attention to. I was too busy concentrating on those gorgeous eyes of hers and that firm body to fully pay attention. But even so, I’m confident I didn’t miss anything important.

By the time the end came, everything was wrapped up individually in a nice package and I found it all quite boring. It has all the earmarks of a great idea that fizzled out along the way and no one could figure out how to live up to the imagination shown in the first part. It wasn’t badly done, but it just lacked creativity.

In short, it’s a pretty average sci-fi series that will help you kill a few hours.

Posted by Alex | Filed Under 3 Stars, Bruce Davison, Catherine Bell, DVD, Eric Stoltz, Lou Diamond Phillips, NR, Sam Neill, SciFi