Flood starts off very slow, well, sort of anyway. A terrible storm hits the British Isles, causing an incredible storm surge to flood the small town of Wick, Scotland. Everyone is mortified and in a state of shock because it came upon the community so suddenly. Although the national meterologists have been watching the storm, it does the unexpected and moves toward London, placing the huge city at great risk. It seems the meteorologists were not able to predict this event - the storm coinciding with high tide and flooding an area of England occupied by several millions of people. The kicker? The storm is due to hit in three short hours and there's barely time to get an evac started.
But one man knew what would happen - Professor Leonard Morrison (Tom Courtenay) has been talking about this threat for years. The surge waters will overrun the Thames River barrier and will flood London, just as his computer model has been predicting for years. But no one will listen. Not his estranged son Rob (Robert Carlyle), whose engineering company is in charge of taking care of the barrier, nor Rob's ex-wife, Sam (Jessalyn Gilsig) who is supervisor of the barrier, and especially not Deputy Prime Minister Campbell (David Suchet) and Police Commissioner Patricia Nash (Joanne Whalley), who are in charge in case of emergency. Prof. Morrison is finally able to see Sam in person and convinces her of the imminent danger and together they convince the powers that be.
Sadly, the waters have already started to infiltrate parts of the city. The surge flows straight over the barrier and continues to do so, with waters snaking their way violently through London. Several groups of people are followed throughout the surge's assault and the aftermath. Rob and Sam end up jumping into the water from the barrier to try and get to safety. Professor Morrison stays behind, fearful of jumping, but is later rescued as his services are now needed to prevent further harm to the city. There's a plumber and his daughter who get caught in the flood waters and have to find a way to safety and there are two underground train workers who get trapped beneath the danger and are oblivious to the horror above them, at least initially. Eventually, these groups find each other and band together, with several others, to try to survive. Prof. Morrison comes up with a way to stop further damage and loss of life and it is a race against the clock for he, Sam and Rob to get back to the barrier to implement the plan before the Prime Minister orders the barrier blown up in a military strike.
Like I said earlier, there's a decent amount of character development early on, but building up to the water washing over the barrier seems to take too long. Additionally, one thing that was annoying and somewhat silly was the fact that, at times, the camera would zoom slightly in on someone and the screen would go artistically black and white and sometimes a timestamp would appear at the bottom. It just made it seem lame. Yes, there was a lot of CG with the water and such, but not all of it was believable, namely the beginning when Wick got washed away. It just looked too fake. Later on, in London, it looks much better.
Flood is not the best disaster movie I've ever seen. It's not terrible, but it's not great. I would be lying if I said that certain scenes didn't bring me to tears as they brought memories of Hurricane Katrina rushing back to me. For those of us who had family in New Orleans and who live in Louisiana, August of 2005 is not that long ago and it was hard seeing scenes of people stuck in their attacks or bodies floating on the water. It just hit too close to home for me, literally. But overall, Flood is not without merit. I really enjoyed the characters of Rob, Sam and Leonard Morrison, plus Commissioner Nash. They were believable and enjoyable. If you are a big fan of disaster flicks, you may want to give it a rent. But be warned, the menu screen is way lame and almost made me afraid to hit Play.
