User Reviews

This is not an action packed, jam it down your throat with over the top CG or hyped up bedroom scenes, folks. This is a film about people and communities. Tom Wopat, always a thought-provoking actor, delivers quiet determination and seriousness to his role, and Barbara Mandrell uses facial expression, rather than booty output to bring this story to life. In short: WATCH IT, it's very good!!! And also, fairly true to form for most everyone that is familiar with the whole state of West Virginia and the problems with coal mining and how communities and people are treated there. The script is reasonably good, but far better than the crap advertised as "entertainment" on today's movies.

Popular "country music" performer Barbara Mandrell makes an inauspicious feature film debut, in this work made for television, as Kate Bishop, a federal agency geologist assigned to assist residents of an imaginary town: Vashti, Tennessee (actual filming is at Lake City in eastern Tennessee's Appalachian region) in relocating from their homes endangered by the potential of gas explosions due to underground fires within coal mines beneath the town and, while performing her duties, she discovers a possible conspiracy organized by a local businessman, using the blazes for his own profit and thereby altering the focus of Kate's function. Her perspective shifts as well by an immediate romantic involvement with the local fish and game warden, played blandly by Tom Wopat, and as the television pedigree of the piece becomes increasingly evident, so does choppy editing and general technical mediocrity, with a script lacking in logic, continuity flaws abounding, and pedestrian playing, notably by the pleasant but wooden Mandrell, although there is role commitment from always reliable Carol Kane who gathers in acting honours in what is ultimately a trite and forgettable affair.

I've been a huge devoted fan of Barbara Mandrell's since I was 3 in 1980. It started with her variety show and then when I was 7 in 1984, I saw Barbara's TV movie Burning Rage. I loved the film and thought Barbara did excellent in her first film. Some other reviewer called Barbara "wooden," which I didn't appreciate and they also called Tom Wopat (Luke Duke of The Dukes Of Hazzard), who played Tom Silver "bland." Obviously this person is either a Country Music and Dukes Of Hazzard hater or they just don't know good acting.