The Triangle, a TV Movie Review

The Triangle was one of those television viewing events I actually looked forward to with much anticipation. My husband calls me a B movie queen, but there is something about a movie, whether good or bad in its filming can actually entertain you as nothing else can. Television and movies are two of my favorite escapes and second only to novels and reading or writing my own tales for that matter.

In this Sci-Fi Channel movie a billionare businessman played by Sam Neill puts together an unusual research team to figure out why he is losing so many ships in the Bermuda Triangle. He is losing money and going through a really strange phase himself so he wants answers! It is hard to dismiss this as anything truly explainable, of course, since it IS the Bermuda Triangle after all.

The characters kept me interested in their lives as well as what they were going through in doing the research needed for the billionare. The movie was strange and bizar but not so bizar that you can say it was over-the-top, it was actually believable and ran on character and suspense rather than just special effects. On the whole it is on the higher scale of the B movie/made-for-tv fares we are sometimes given.

Lou Diamond Philips, however, stole the show as Meeno, a Greenpeace activist and boat builder/repairman who, on a Greenpeace mission to save a whale, ended up seeing a ship cracked in two like a toy and the men upon it lost at sea. Of course, his speedy inflatable went down and all the members on board were tossed into the sea and just vanished, except for him, of course. After a brief stay in the hospital, Meeno returns home to an elated son about the age of ten and his trusty dog. A little boy comes running out calling Meeno Daddy, but Meeno doesn't have a blue who this little boy is. "Who is this?" he asks his wife.

"This is Dillon, our youngest," she answers as patiently as she can. She doesn't mistrust Meeno, but wonders, by the look on her face, if just perhaps the doctors let him out of the hospital a wee bit too soon.

Meeno and Dillon begin to bond and he goes out one day to buy some toys for them to play with, all of them. When he gets back he is excitedly talking about how the three men of the family are going to have fun and how much Dillon is going to enjoy one particular toy just purchased. Meeno's wife looks at him and asks who this Dillon kid is. Meeno, in horror, runs to Dillon's room to discover the room is not for a child, but a study they have created to help him in his Greenpeace activities. Not good. Now the question becomes, how to get Dillon back.

While Meeno is struggling with the major possibility he is going insane and has lost a son somewhere in time, the team has discovered the Triangle is really a rift in Time-Space and it was caused by the military years before in the Philidelphia Experiment. I wouldn't have given the movie any credit until it was shown how things could be explained all the way back into legends. It was plausible and made me think. I like that.

Another of my favorite moments was when the team are look outside a window and Brown Shirts, you know, German bad buys, are rounding up people and, I believe, checking papers. The team tries to escape and are confronted by a jerk-off Brown Shirt who speaks plain ol' American English (just not Ameriken Anglish). In the ripple that just occurred, the good guys of World War II lost and the bad buys of Germany (not the German people, a big difference there) won. The Brown Shirt jerk off pulls a gun and is pointing it at them as reinforcements approach and another ripple. When the ripple passes over it is modern day America on a typical American street and the once-Brown Shirt-jerk off is holding his hands as if he has an imaginary gun. He is confused, but not as confused as the "reinforcements" who are just ordinary guys who are looking around wondering what the heck just happened. The team hurries off to see what else they can discover before another ripple can catch them.

As I said before, this movie is character driven and all of the characters can truly be believed and you can see something of yourself in them. But Lou Diamond Philips' portrayal of the Everyman was splendid. It is a shame we do not see him as much as we should (besides, he is dang good looking)!

If you catch this on a re-run I highly recommend it. If you have free rentals at the movie store, or want something to keep you going for a little while - again, I recommend it.

Sci-Fi Channel says this movie actually has a basis behind it:

The miniseries coincides with the 60th anniversary of the most infamous Bermuda Triangle mystery—the disappearance of Flight 19. On Dec. 5, 1945, five torpedo bombers disappeared after getting lost during a routine mission out of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Then, a large twin-engine Mariner rescue plane, Flight 19, went out to find the missing aircraft, and it also disappeared. Even after the largest maritime search in history, no trace of the six planes or 27 crewmen was ever located.

On the Mountaingirl video scale I give it *****(out of 5 asteriks).