The world is brought to an agonizing standstill as two superpowers, China and the United States, appear ready to engage in all-out nuclear war. Complete Armageddon, total annihilation, the end of humanity—call it what you will, atomic threats are nothing new in the world of cinema, and B-movies love to take their protagonists on unrealistic, globe-trotting adventures to prevent the disaster. Not quite the case in David M. Parks and LeeAnne Bauer’s Blackout, a film that paints a tantalizing portrait of survival.
With the global situation balancing on a knife’s edge, former special operatives members Noah Daniels (Tyler James) and his wife Ella (LeeAnne Bauer) pivot down the route of government contracting, aided by longtime friends from their army days in Cai (Vu Mai) and Knox (Omar Moustafa Ghonim). Setting up shop at a large warehouse facility, all seems well until alarms are raised: the war has started, and there are many who seek to exploit this newfound chaos, something that Ella and Noah must contend with when a deadly local militia and a hardened criminal leader in Atticus Reed (Mike Ferguson) come to their doorstep.
There’s no sugarcoating it; Blackout is ambitious to the max, chucking all manner of guns, macguffins, flames, and military might at a story you may have seen before (albeit with slight alterations). Some might argue it bites off more than it can chew, what with all its characters scrambling to protect what is theirs in the face of an atomic threat. A lot of other mid-to-low budget features with similarly high-stakes premises have faltered when it comes to maintaining their scope, and Blackout has a lot of bold ideas and even loftier methods of executing them; it certainly tries to go big and boisterous whenever possible before dialing things back to a more grounded perspective. Not every attempt works, and you start to notice the narrative losing its focus by introducing more and more players into an already crowded arena, along with some really rough edges in the visual effects and atmospheric sound design. Yet when the central characters take center stage, the stakes begin to feel more tangible.
A capable cast commands the screen in Blackout. From the grizzled ex-con Atticus Reed, who’s in search of something the Daniels have, to the world-weary Knox and a measured LeeAnne Bauer in the lead as Ella, they all elevate the story into something worthwhile—nudging it past the kind of dystopian fare that invests in spectacle but forgets about other nuances. Nobody is here to save the planet, but everybody is out to rescue both themselves and those they hold dear, which makes the emotional side of the narrative work more often than not. The fight scenes are also engaging, with some really gnarly stuntwork involving pyrotechnics and effective gunplay leading the way.
Though not without its hurdles, Blackout frequently lives up to its apocalyptic vision with a strong core ensemble and some intense action scenes.
