A cloud of nanobots escape from an oil platform controlled by corrupt businessman, Roy Stark (David Keith), and floats with a storm, devouring everything it touches. Blamed for the destruction of the platform as an eco-terrorist, ex-reporter Katherine Stern (Danica McKellar) seeks out theoretical climatologist Nathan McCain (Chris Pratt) to help clear her name and discover what really happened. Eventually, they are aided by Colonel Thomas Miller (Franklin Dennis Jones) who is ready to use nuclear force to stop the nanobots.
Let me dwell on the climax of Path of Destruction. The world is in jeopardy. Only a wild scheme, backed by the military, can save it. So, an aging Colonel chooses an ex-newswoman accused of treason and a climatologist to join him on a dangerous mission with an untested aircraft, and no one else. Couldn’t he get, I don’t know, maybe…a pilot? Perhaps some trained military personnel? They can’t all be in Iraq. This is just one of the dumb moments that are littered through a very dumb film with a not so bad premise.
A nanobot (itty bitty computer for those of you who didn’t keep up with the last years of Star Trek) swarm—sweeping across the country like a storm, destroying everything—has potential as the basis for a horror film or a serious sci-fi picture. For a cheesy, made for SciFi Cannel romantic adventure flick, it doesn’t do so well. Part of that could be the budget that stopped the nanobots from doing much destruction. They kill a few folks, and a building falls over, but more damage is shown from hail (apparently, if a bunch of mini-robots hitch a ride with some clouds, it causes hail). I’m guessing it was cheaper to film falling snowballs than to CGI-in a town dissolving.
With the budget too low, it was up to the screenwriter to save the day with a clever idea. So, what exciting twist did the author of the classic Boa vs. Python (it was robbed at the Oscars) come up with? EMP. Yes, electromagnetic pulse, now a concept in every third movie, is trotted out once again. At least most of the many, many, many films that use an EMP device are gracious enough to make a big deal of having one (since no such device exists). But here we have Colonel Miller ordering one from stock.
David Keith plays Roy Stark, who is an evil businessman. I can’t imagine that any more thought was put into the character than that. He does evil things because, well, because all cheap movies where a corporation creates something problematic has a CEO that does evil things. It undoubtedly saved a lot of time on script writing. All that had to be done was to scan in any of a thousand scripts lying about, and then do a find-and-replace to change the evil businessman’s name to Roy Stark. I remember long ago when David Keith was in good movies. It was very long ago. Now he’s become the king of ill-conceived, made-for-TV genre schlock (Sabretooth, Deep Shock, Epoch, Epoch: Evolution). It’s a living.
Although directed by Stephen Furst (Animal House, Babylon 5), he can sidestep most of the blame for this mess, except for casting himself as the painfully unfunny comedy relief, and then failing utterly in self-direction. He does a passable job with stars McKellar and Pratt, but considering how dismal this project is, it doesn’t matter.