I promise you the movie is played straight. It is really supposed to be a thriller and we are really supposed to be thrilled. I explain that to prepare the ground for the information that the story involves a chemical weapon that cannot be allowed to grow warmer than 50 degrees, and about two brave citizens who try to keep it away from evil terrorists by keeping it in the back of a speeding ice cream truck. Yes. There is also a sequence where they use an aluminum rowboat as a toboggan, sliding down a steep hill into a river, where the dangerous substance can be dragged behind the boat because the stream is "fed by glaciers."
The heroes are played by Skeet Ulrich, who thinks he is in a Jerry Bruckheimer production, and Cuba Gooding Jr., who has been in "Jerry Maguire" for the last four years, including Oscar appearances. The biological weapon has been developed by Dr. Richard Long (David Paymer), whose dialogue seems to have been phoned in by the team of Carl Sagan and Mephistopheles. Early on he announces an "epiphany" about a "new molecular configuration," in which, as I murkily recall, he plans to remove atoms from one side of his molecules and stick them on the other side instead. He discovers that his plan is flawed when a test goes wrong, defoliating not 200 yards of a remote island, but five miles. Eighteen soldiers die, their flesh erupting like cheese on a burnt pizza. "Oh, my God!" he cries. "I am become Death--the destroyer of worlds."
Usually a line like that sets up a mournful aria, but in "Chill Factor" it simply results in a 10-year prison sentence for Brynner (Peter Firth), the U.S. military man in charge of the operation. Embittered, and who wouldn't be, he gets out of prison and comes looking for Dr. Long and his magic formula. Follow this closely: Because Brynner believes the United States does things it condemns other nations for doing, he therefore plans to sell the deadly poison to the terrorists with the most money.
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