fredcdobbs5 The previous reviewers have pretty well summarized this SyFy Channel "epic". It's a by-the-numbers--for the SyFy Channel, anyway--story about a disaster threatening a large city and caused in part by the actions of a corporation that will do anything to increase its profits. It's better than some SyFy Channel movies, and worse than others--if you know anything about the kinds of movies SyFy makes, you'll know what I mean--and about the only REAL reason to watch it is a poolside bikini contest that's interrupted by a volcano turning Miami into a giant steambath. SyFy seemed to have put more money into hiring scads of incredibly hot bikini models--and there are, thankfully, a LOT of them--for this scene than it did for the entire special effects budget, for which they have earned my undying gratitude. Otherwise, there's not really much of a reason to watch this.

Paul Magne Haakonsen "World on Fire" as the DVD is titled when purchased from Amazon, or "Miami Magma" as titled here on IMDb is definitely one of the more boring and uneventful of natural disaster movies that I have seen. It even makes "Dante's Peak" seem like a masterpiece.The story is about an underground volcano that threaten Miami, and it is up to two scientists to save the city and avert a catastrophe.Of course it is, every single disaster movie follows this exact same script and mold down to the core - no pun intended. However, "World on Fire" just never made it out of the trench to so speak. The plot and storyline was as predictable as they come, and even for a natural disaster movie it was painstakingly predictable to the point where even a blind man would see it coming.Throughout the entire movie there is but a handful of oddly placed localized incidents involving magma or superheated steam. There was surprisingly little magma in the movie, which really was a disappointing lack of things for the movie, and it worked as an anchor around the movie, dragging it down severely in its enjoyment. And also throughout the entire movie there is not a single moment where you feel that the entire city of Miami was in any danger at all. And then it just ended - with the scientists saving the day of course.As for the acting in the movie, well it wasn't Oscar nominated material, let me just put it like that. I was mildly thrilled to see Brad Dourif's name on the cast list, but it was a short lived thrill and not even he could muster to lift up this movie.And don't get suckered in by the fancy DVD cover the way that I did. It promises a massive volcano erupting over a metropolis on fire, and for some reason there are celestial bodies on the sky also erupting with fire. But nothing, and I cannot stretch the word nothing enough here, even remotely like the DVD cover is to be found anywhere in the entire movie. It was just false advertising and luring with hopes of a massive natural disaster movie, that just turned out to be a fluke and nothing more than a fizzling lit match.If you enjoy natural disaster movies, then know that there are far, far better movies available on the market, and "World on Fire" is hardly worth the effort of spending 97 minutes on. "World on Fire"? Nah, more like "Nothing on Fire".

dwr246 Since we've had volcanoes destroy LA (Volcano) and NYC (Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York), someone decided to let Miami in on the action. The original title, Miami Magma, had both alliteration and assonance, and was really quite clever. Unfortunately, SyFy decided to change it to Swamp Volcano, which is merely confusing, since swamps do not evoke Miami and vice versa, and only a very small portion of the movie actually takes place in a swamp. And unfortunately, the rest of the movie is on equally unsolid ground.This cautionary tale about oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico starts off with an explosion on an oil rig owned by Holter Energy. The explosion occurs when they drill into magma instead of oil. Unfortunately, the CEO (Brad Dourif) and head of PR (Cleavant Derrick) seem to be more concerned about misleading the public, and hiding an illegal, although very lucrative, drilling operation in downtown Miami. Geology professor, Antoinette Vitrini (Rachel Hunter) becomes concerned when her ex-husband, Brad (J.D. Evermore) informs her that Holter's drilling activities seem to parallel her unpublished research. She has even more to be concerned about when she learns that her assistant, Brandon (Griff Furst), on whom her much younger sister, Emily (Melissa Ordway) has a crush, has sold her research to Holter. When she confronts Holter, she only manages to convince them that they need to kill her to keep her silent. Unfortunately, by this time, volcanic activity has started cropping up around Miami, so Antoinette must race against time, and potential assassins to save not herself and her sister, but all of Miami. Can she and Brandon do it? I'll give the writers credit for some plausibility in suggesting that the Gulf of Mexico could be the caldera of a supervolcano, even though it's pretty widely accepted that the gulf is the result of continental drift. However, apparently they don't know geography terribly well, since Miami is on the Atlantic side of Florida, and therefore highly unlikely to be affected by vulcanism in the Gulf of Mexico. They really should have set the movie in Tampa. Equally hard to buy was the whole concept of a "steam tsunami" generated by an underwater eruption. Volcanoes erupt underwater all the time. They have to be pretty close to the surface in order to generate any kind of steam plume that could be threatening, and steam plumes don't behave the way they did in this movie. The "steam tsunami" really behaved more like a pyroclastic flow, which might have worked better. And I'm not sure I buy that liquid nitrogen could be used to redirect the flow of lava from an eruption. All in all, not very credible science.The rest of the writing wasn't terribly credible, either. Antoinette and Emily appear to be very far apart in age, almost too far apart to be sisters, and it might have worked better if they were written as mother and daughter. It's also hard to buy that Antoinette, who is supposedly an experienced professor, wouldn't take better care to make sure that all of her students were accounted for before leaving one behind to get boiled in the swamp. Emily starts off as rather immature, and there's really nothing to indicate the kind of growth her character experiences throughout the movie. Brandon's motives both for selling Antoinette's research, and for his altruism at the end of the movie aren't really clear. And just about everyone involved with Holter seems to be motivated solely by greed, which just makes all of them seem one dimensional.Oddly, in spite of the bad writing, I actually found the acting to be quite enjoyable. I expected to have a hard time buying Rachel Hunter as an academic, but she turns in a credible performance, and I enjoyed watching her. Likewise, Melissa Ordway does a good job of making her character likable, in spite of her early flightiness. Griff Furst does an excellent job of playing the hunky nerd. J.D. Evermore is quite likable as Antoinette's ex, so much so that you wonder why she treats him with such hostility at first. Cleavant Derricks does manage to make his character a little more complex, although the complexity rapidly disappears as greed takes over. And Brad Dourif use his intensity well to show a man who is so driven that he allows his greed to overtake his sensibility.The effects are rather cheesy, and the movie could have used some scenes of destructions of familiar landmarks (I mean, there must be some in Miami). Likewise, the scenes of those who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time could have been better done. The steam tsunami scene was hard to buy into. And one would assume that the tennis players might have noticed that the ground was getting hot before it opened and spewed forth lava, turning a tennis ball into a deadly hot object (I'll give them points for good CGI showing the hole in the coach's chest, as well originality in the writing of that scene).All in all, it was about what I would expect from a SyFy original film, which sets the bar pretty low. However, if you're in the right the mood, don't expect too much, and don't take it too seriously, it can be an enjoyable film.

RovingWriter This was a very fun movie to watch, full of action. Dumb science, but not bad. Certainly it's not awful science, more like "implausible." Even if one supposed there might be a volcano in Miami, the special effects were not in accordance with what one might expect a true volcano to do. Also, I found the final scene of the movie startling. If it's what I think it was, then it was the final, most implausible special effect of all. On the other hand, if it were plausible, then it wouldn't be much of a movie, more like a docudrama perhaps. The characters were what made the movie interesting, though even there, it seemed that people were acting in contradiction. One minute, a character is acting moral and wants to do the right thing, the next, they are willing to throw everything they said out the window for a cut of the proceeds. Another character has a history of being dishonest, then suddenly they have a conscience. A young woman is flaunting herself, then suddenly she becomes mature. I guess it was the inconsistencies that amused me more than anything.Just one last comment: This movie played under the name "Swamp Volcano" on the SyFy Channel but it is the same movie.