Chill Factor MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +2 Content: -3

Arlo (Cuba Gooding Jr.) is an ice cream truck driver. Tim Mason (Skeet Ulrich) works the night shift at the local diner. After receiving the chill factor device, code-named Elvis, from a mortally wounded scientist (David Paymer), they must deliver it in Arlos ice cream truck through dangerous mountain roads to the proper authorities. But with a rogue ex-military commando (Peter Firth) on their tail with plans of his own for Elvis, the journey takes some very harrowing turns. Explosions, narrow escapes, and intense chase scenes ensue as they try to stay one step ahead of a dangerous madman, while carrying a device that must be kept at a temperature of 50 degrees or less. If not, it will destroy the entire state and every living thing in it. Gooding and Ulrich provide some comic relief as they try to beat the heat in CHILL FACTOR. But with some very hammy acting and a fairly unbelievable story, the action is the only real thrill left to audiences.

Power without caution is death. CHILL FACTOR is about man creating without caution and becoming his own means of annihilation. Doomsday weapons carefully controlled and in the right hands are effective deterrents to war. But in the wrong hands they become the deadly tools of evil men. This film is like that doomsday bomb. In the right hands it could have provided some humor and excitement while communicating a deeper message about mans creative potential gone berserk. But in the wrong hands its filled with gratuitous violence and obscene language that serves absolutely no purpose. We see bodies melting and disintegrating when Elvis is tested, a throat cut, people shot and killed close up, prolonged scenes with a mans bloody body, and a man clipped in the head and killed by a mountain rock ledge. Most disturbing, though, are the 50+ obscenities, 34 crudities, and 10 profanities which are added for supposed comic affect. CHILL FACTOR, with its obscene language and unnecessarily graphic violence, needs to stay in the deep freeze.

Preview Reviewer: Cliff McNeely
Distributor: Warner Brothers, 4000 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA 91522, (818) 954-8000