Chill Factor takes great pains to set up a back story to give complexity to its supporting characters, but the result is not so much complexity as sheer nonsense. At an army lab on a remote island, arrogant scientist Richard Long (David Paymer) insists on testing a new compound over the objections of his wiser, more honorable military counterpart, Major Andrew Brynner (Peter Firth). When the compound, code-named Elvis, has about the same effect on eighteen soldiers as that bucket of water had on the Wicked Witch of the West, Brynner is made the scapegoat and sentenced to ten years in prison.
Ten years later, Long, stricken with guilt, has become the world's most lovable researcher, while Brynner, stricken with disillusionment, has become the embodiment of pure evil. Brynner tracks down Long at the remote research facility in Montana where he has spent all these years trying, without success, to figure out how to stabilize the formula (rather than, say, destroy it).
Brynner and his team of mercenaries — who must have some heavy backers, given the sophisticated equipment they use — break into the lab and shoot the good doctor, but he lives just long enough to escape to the nearby town and hand Elvis over to his fishing buddy, Tim Mason (Skeet Ulrich), a short-order cook at the local diner. Before Long croaks, he informs Tim that Elvis, housed in a metal canister topped by a handy digital thermometer, is harmless as long as its temperature stays below fifty degrees Fahrenheit; if it warms beyond fifty degrees, it will melt and kill everybody within hundreds of miles, causing their flesh to drip off their bones like . . . like . . . well, like a computer-generated special effect of flesh dripping off bones.
Luckily for Tim, Arlo (Cuba Gooding Jr.) has just stopped by to make an ice-cream delivery in his dilapidated but refrigerated truck. Since Brynner and company are on his tail, Tim highjacks Arlo and his truck in hopes of getting Elvis to Fort Magruder before Montana becomes even less populous than it already is. Henceforth, Tim and Arlo become that reliable staple of action movies — the reluctant squabbling buddy team that must overcome basic dislike and develop a bond of loyalty.
Gooding's shtick here is reasonably funny even though familiar; Ulrich is a complete zero, which may not be his fault — first-time director Hugh Johnson and writers Drew Gitlin and Mike Cheda give him nothing to do but look cute and act as a foil for Gooding's wisecracks.
You can reasonably predict most of the rest of the plot: Arlo and Tim desperately try to keep Elvis cold and out of the hands of Brynner, while pursued by both the bad guys and the stupid local cops, who have decided that Tim killed Dr. Long. The only time what's going to happen is unclear is when the filmmakers open up holes big enough to drive an eighteen-wheeler — or an ice-cream truck — through, and there are many such times.
For instance, we learn late in the game that Brynner plans to sell Elvis to the highest bidder in some kind of ridiculous online auction. (Point your browsers to eBay.com/weapons/flesh-eating.htm.) The whole scheme grinds to a halt while he stages a live videocam demonstration of its effects on, of course, Tim and Arlo. But in the original plan, he didn't know he'd have any subjects. And he has no way of knowing how Elvis will behave after ten years of Long's work on it. And it's a stupid idea anyway.
There are continuity gaffes: We see a small motorboat get seriously dented as our duo rides it down a mountainside into a river. (Don't ask.) We see that same boat in the river moments later, looking showroom fresh.
These errors in crucial plot matters and errors in setting up the rules of the game undercut any chance of suspense. How can we care about what happens in a universe where the gods can (and do) arbitrarily wave their magic wands and change the laws of logic on a whim? Cuba and Skeet: Their names are more interesting than their movie.
