In recent years there has been a veritable flood of disaster movies hitting the big screen or being used as the subject for TV mini-series.

Let’s see, “Twister” featured tornados and some really bad writing. There were those two volcano flicks last year, and we mustn’t forget the sinking of the “Titanic,” an all around excellent film.

The coming year will see two, yes two, big-budget asteroid movies. Oh, and Howie Long’s forest fire spectacular “Firestorm” is playing now in a theater near you, but probably not for long.

Which brings us to “Hard Rain,” a disaster movie about a flood. Actually, it’s more of an armored car heist movie within a disaster movie about a flood.

The movie has a cast full of talented people. The kind of people who don’t normally do disaster movies, like Morgan Freeman, Christian Slater and Minnie Driver.

The major problem with “Hard Rain” is the plot. It’s all so contrived as to be absolutely unbelievable.

As the film opens, a small town is being evacuated due to rising flood waters. Stir in an armored car trapped in the rising waters and some robbers and let the story begin.

Tom (Slater), one of the armored truck guys, manages to escape with the money and hide it in the cemetery. This sets up an extended chase sequence, as the thieves, led by Jim (Freeman), try to track Tom down and get the $3 million.

The rest of the movie is a kind of who-has-the-money-and-who-can-you-trust free for all, with the water constantly rising.

Morgan Freeman is just too nice as the bad guy. He seems more concerned about not hurting anybody else than about getting his hands on the money.

And his band of cronies all have a little quirk to identify them. One is dumb as a rock, one is a high school science teacher gone bad and one has a bible quote for every situation. (How ’bout “thou shalt not steal,” buddy?)

There are just so many plot contrivances in “Hard Rain.” So many things are such an obvious set up just to move the story along.

Like why would they have only one guy working at the dam during a flood? Why is Minnie Driver the only person still in town? Why do we need to know the sheriff (Randy Quaid) was just voted out of office?

The movie is also guilty of one of my least favorite plot ploys, the tiny gun in the hidden ankle holster routine.

At one point we see the Sheriff put a small pistol in an ankle holster. Hmm … have we seen the last of that gun? Or, will that gun be pulled out at exactly the right moment when everybody else has forgotten about its existence and save the day? If you’ve ever seen a movie before you know the answer.

Of course, one does not attend a disaster flick just for the story. You go because you want to see some action, a chase scene or two and some great special effects.

In that regard, from a technical standpoint, “Hard Rain” is an excellent movie. The rain looks like rain and the flood looks real. Some of the special effects are very cool, especially as the dam breaks and all hell breaks loose. You also have to appreciate the difficulties the cast and crew must have gone through filming everything in the water.

So maybe they’re scraping the bottom of the disaster movie barrel. Pretty soon we’ll be seeing bizarre hybrid combination disaster movies like “Earthquake Hurricane Forest Fire” or “Twisters on the Titanic.” I can hardly wait.

3 stars out of five.

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Mike Milik is a senior in advertising from West Des Moines.