14 Hours 
14 Hours: Review
Wednesday 04.06.2005
alice ttlg || 09:06 AM
This is an unbelievably stupid movie. I've seen some bad movies but this one is singularly stupid. I didn't realize until it started that's it supposed to be based on the really bad flood we had here in Houston in June, 2001 from the remnants of Tropical Storm Allison. The entire plot of the movie is about the tunnels and basement of one of the main hospitals here flooding and the subsequent evacuation of the hospital, all of which took -- wait, can you guess? 14 hours!
In real life, it was a spectacular flood, I live three blocks from where I-10 flooded 20-25 feet, completely submerging 18 wheelers (those with empty trailers floated along, their wheels scraping the tops of the cars on the freeway below), stranding people in some areas of the over and under passes in downtown Houston for ten and twelve hours until the water receded. The magnitude of the flood was virtually unexpected, the rain came from the north of town and came straight down the middle, dumping 30 inches in about six hours.
But it wasn't like a 40-car pileup, it happened mostly during the night and by morning it was sunny and people were helping each other out and spending the next few months cleaning up the mess.
The people who made 14 hours managed to take what little suspense existed in the situation and drain it totally dry. (Yeah, yeah, I'm so punny!) It's the most boring movie I've ever watched with half an eye.
The characters are so flat they could be Flat Stanleys (and he would have done a better job). We get the worst kind of dreck in this movie, every crappy (supposed to be) heart-wrenching, tear-jerking subplot done with absolutely no emotional involvement at all. We get a single doctor who's supposed to be only person in the whole hospital who can organize the evacuation, we get a city manager that we're supposed to believe told the hospital to suck rocks and handle the evacuation themselves. But of course, he comes thru in the final moments. Poor Kris Kristofferson. And we get the time displayed periodically throughout the movie, just to make sure you know exactly how many hours it's been. All I care about is the two hours I lost to this really stupid movie.
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