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I decided to watch this film largely by chance. It was about to start on a TV channel that usually shows good movies, and I sat back to watch it, not knowing what to expect. The film is a bloated softcore from the late 80s with Mickey Rourke in the lead role (surprise!) and a story set in Brazil, which, conveniently, is one of the most hypersexualized countries in the world, a regular target for sex tourists and girls trafficking for prostitution in other countries. The direction was in charge of Zalman King, who has some taste for films with strong erotic themes.

The film begins with an intriguing premise: a young, inexperienced lawyer from a North American firm must fly with her boss to Rio de Janeiro to settle an important real estate deal. However, pressure from Southeast Asian competitors forces them to separate, and the lawyer has to meet a mysterious millionaire who is an interested party in the business. However, he is more interested in her than in the business itself, and decides to start playing with her mind and senses, apparently just for his own personal pleasure.

Technically, the film presents some level of care through cinematography, that uses the best of tropical settings, the sun and the beach, and that knows how to move the camera in the best way to explore the most appealing and enriching angles. The soundtrack is not a strong point, but it does its job effectively and fulfills its role, as the visual and sound effects. The sets, costumes and props are suitable for what is proposed, especially the abandoned hotel, which is not only a regular setting for the main character's ramblings but is also the center of the business that led her to Brazil. There is an effort to portray wealth through limousines, elaborate dinners and apparently expensive clothes, but everything seems to be a whim of a nouveau riche, which is not exactly a defect, but a matter of taste. The production values do what they can to give us a beautiful, elegant film, and they hit that goal.

The film's biggest problem is its script, which gives us a story full of holes, largely inflated and incredible, and clichéd characters guided in such a way that it never goes more than fifteen minutes without a hot scene to give to a predominantly male audience (although this film represents a common fantasy among women who need to travel for career reasons). The atmosphere is what we expect and strives to show the most sensual side of a city that, for the US mentality, is synonymous of free and easy sex. There are several moments of pure surreal nonsense, like the entire sequence with the German couple. There is no refinement, a lot of torn clothes and some raw brutality, a lot of sex, desire and excitement, but no affection or love play.

Carré Otis and Jacqueline Bisset are the most central female characters in the plot. Both are elegant, we could even say they are charming, especially Otis, but the quality of their dramatic interpretation is dubious. Bisset disappears for a long time and things don't get any better when her character reappears, more debauched than a feline in heat, to join the "party" without adding much to the plot. Otis is not a good actress, she has an absolute lack of personality, she seems constantly out of breath and has no other facial expression than those that show embarrassment, fear or shame. Another detail to think of is that her character never shows us any kind of professional merit that justifies her going to Brazil. Mickey Rourke was a casting mistake: he is quite convincing in action or suspense roles, but he has no sex appeal, he is ugly, he has no aesthetic taste, and turns his character into an irritating bully, who intimidates and frightens his prey rather than seduce her.

Disaster films have always been a good guarantee of forgettable entertainment that the public consumes without much concern, without thinking about it. This is just one of many, and it is not one of the best, although there are also more infamous examples.

The plot is set in a reasonably near future, where the human race has responded to climate change in the laziest way possible: instead of adopting a lifestyle in harmony with the world, it has simply taken control of the world climate through an imaginative system of stationary satellites controlled from the International Space Station. The problem is that, just a few months before the system passes to the UN (it would be in the hands of the North American administration or NASA), it begins to present very serious flaws that endanger the survival of life in the world.

Perhaps I should try not to dwell too much on the verisimilitude (or lack thereof) of this plot. In fact, in addition to being morally reprehensible (we are tired of seeing Man pretend to be God in many ways), the idea of such a climate control network seems stupidly expensive and absolutely unfeasible considering the scope (it would require a broad consensus of all nations and financing in which everyone took part), the complexity, costs and number of problems to overcome. It's extremely unrealistic, and I don't know if the public accepted the idea to the point to watch the film. However, once this strangeness has been overcome, the film unfolds decently and gives us a plot that, although predictable, cliché and occasionally tedious, is at least capable of entertaining. And of course, it's best to forget about character development, which is limited to the most basic.

On a technical level, the film invests all its resources in visual effects and high-quality CGI, embellished by excellent filming and photography work, and by good sets and costumes. We cannot complain about the lack of grandiose scenes or spectacular action, especially when disasters and storms truly begin to devastate several parts of the planet simultaneously. The visual effects do a lot for the most impressive scenes, and the soundtrack provides a happy and well-made support.

Dean Devlin is an established producer, but it is clear that he is not fit to fill the role of director. He is not able to properly coordinate or guide the cast, and the result of this is the random way in which each of the actors does their work. You feel that the atmosphere behind the scenes may not have been the most fluid: Ed Harris, the veteran here, escapes a lot from all this and uses the wisdom of experience to give us an interesting and well-made interpretation of a character who almost didn't appears, although it is important. The rest of the actors are adrift: Abbie Cornish seems to have found some port of call that allows her to extricate herself better, but Jim Sturgess, Gerard Butler and Andy Garcia are lost and confused by their material and their respective characters, eventually wasting much of their talent.