Airline Disaster (2010)

It's officially summer here, in the Northern Hemisphere at least anyway, which means (travel strikes providing) that people will be booking flights, jetting away on their holidays and excitedly anticipating a week away from having any kind of responsibilities whatsoever. Fitting then that on that tangent I felt it was time to cover an "air crash disaster" genre of movie again, with 2010 Asylum offering: Airline Disaster. It's pretty warm here this week, very warm in fact and as a result my hayfever is flaring up and I have very little energy, so naturally I wanted to opt for something this evening that requires very little concentration and very little attention on my part. And I think I might have knocked it out of the park with this one to be honest. Just put the explosions in front of me alright, and let me zone out. 

Seconds after Captain Joseph Franklin (Scott Valentine) takes off on the maiden voyage of the new Starquest Coastal Airlines, his family are abducted and taken hostage by a gang of Neo Nazis: The Aryan Brotherhood. Meanwhile onboard said flight, the same group seizes control of the airplane, storming the cabin with FBI Agent Gina Vitale (Lindsey McKeon) managing to slip away before control of the plane was lost. It transpires Joe Franklin is the brother of The President; President Harriet Franklin (Meredith Baxter) and when the lead kidnapper Robert Stevens (Geoff Meed) demands Joe contact his sister, Stevens demands the release of 10 Aryan Brotherhood members and gives the President 90 minutes to meet his demands. Back at the compound, as Joe's wife (who's name I don't know yet...) manages to wriggle free of her restraints with a bit of help from her son, and is just able to smuggle her son out of the window, sending him for help, before the kidnappers realise, but when they take his sister outside and threaten to shoot her if he doesn't return, he comes back and the pair are escorted away from their mother. Onboard the aircraft, a fracas in the cargo hold between Gina and one of the hijackers causes the autopilot to cut out, meaning the aircraft has to flown manually by Joe, and for some reason this puts the plane into a massive dive... not entirely sure why, but it does result in the plane smashing it's way through some buildings that would usually do more damage to an aircraft wing than to a solid brick built structure... before the pilots manage to wrestle the plane back under control and higher into the sky. Inside the White House, President Franklin learns from Gina that one of the hijackers is dead, and also learns that owing to the problems with the autopilot, remote control of the plane has now been compromised (at this point I recognized one of the Presidents advisors played by Stephen Blackehart from 100 Million BC!!). Getting wise to President Franklin's stalling, and presuming they plan to shoot down the plane, Robert has the plane redirected to fly over the Eastern Coast, but using a remote system the military attempts to force the plane to land at a nearby military airport but have to abort the procedure when the plane doesn't respond correctly and nosedives too quickly. Meanwhile the FBI have tracked the family's hijackers, using footage picked up from Captain Franklin's security cameras, and storm the compound in an attempt to capture the hijackers, but it goes badly with one of them getting shot and the other burning to death when he crashes his truck into a military helicopter... but it does lead them to discover where the family are being held. Back onboard the airplane, Robert is suddenly very interested in a man who has a briefcase handcuffed to himself... I'm not entirely sure why... but Robert decides he wants the contents of the briefcase and accomplishes this by chopping the guys hand off. Inside the case are several millions in bonds, which Robert stashes in a skip in the cargo hold before shooting one of his companions who witnessed the whole thing...? Gina then proceeds to find the case for herself and after reporting back to President Franklin that the hijacking is actually all about seizing the money and not about the prisoners after all, she pledges she will try to take down the hijackers herself rather than have the plane shot down. Making her way into the passenger hold, Gina is captured by Robert and convincing him that she has the case, he takes her to the cargo hold where a fight breaks out, ending when Robert, thinking he has dealt with Gina sets up explosives to blow the cargo door open. But Gina, regains consciousness steals the case and is about the take Robert down when he detonates the explosives anyway, blowing the door off and severing one of the engines from the wing... the same wings that flew through buildings earlier but uh... whatever.  With the plane in a precarious position but approaching an uninhabited area, President Franklin gives the order for the plane to be taken down. But the plane is equipped with an "anti missile system" that renders the missiles useless, causing more damage to the city below, so instead they resort to plan B and evacuate the area below before deploying a space station laser to literally vaporise the plane in the air! But it all goes completely wrong, taking out one of the fighter pilots instead and causing more damage to the city below! Back at the compound, the family kidnappers learn that the plane has been erroneously shot down, via the news (typical media!) and are just about the execute the family when the FBI crash in and kill the kidnappers. Meanwhile onboard the plane, Gina is able to dispose of a couple more hijackers, and working her way to the cockpit takes out the final hijacker but with the plane rudderless, running out of fuel and severely compromised, Joe makes the decision to bring the plane down in the Potomac River 'Miracle in the Hudson' style!

Phew! There is... alot to unpack with this one. And I will get to that in short order, but largely, broadbrushly speaking, this wasn't all that bad! There was an incredible amount of suspension of disbelief required to go with it and if you are a bit forgiving of the movies amateurish special effects and you can look passed that to a degree, then actually this wasn't too bad! I've certain seen worse Asylum movies and it seems every now and again, when they put some actual effort into things, they can put together a decent movie.

Meredith Baxter and Scott Valentine are the standout actors in the piece by a country furlong, and I guess, rightfully so being the most experienced in the entire movie. But they do a good job as the President and the Pilot respectively and are practically carrying this whole movie. Lindsey McKeown as Gina was mostly ok but she got very vanilla and wooden in places and some of the other acting particularly from the hijackers and the kidnappers got a bit hammy. But largely the acting was alright here which was refreshing. 50% of carrying a movie is down to the performance of the people in it. And the 2 main leads did a pretty decent job of carrying it.

One area I do want to be critical of though, sort of slides in to the plot development. As I mentioned earlier, you have to go into this with a significant suspension of disbelief. The plane crashes through concrete buildings, metal structures and other stuff that in real life would tear the plane to ribbons. Plane wings are pretty well built, granted, but I doubt they would sever the top off the Washington monument... There are some other moments of silliness; the planes engine spontaneously explodes to nothingness when it hits the ground, machinegun fire can cause a military helicopter to spontaneously explode, some of the random explosions would have given Michael Bay a hard-on... and it brings the tone of the movie down considerably. I know it's action and drama, but it's action and drama for action and drama's sake and if they had dialled back on it actually, it would have made the film more respectable.

The special effects are obviously pretty low budget and at times that is a bit more obvious than others, but they were actually not that bad. It looked like a real plane... mostly... and the action set pieces that were fully computer animated, looked - for the most part - more or less real. You could tell that what you were watching was a simulation, it didn't look 100% like real life, but I think they did the best they could with the circumstances they found themselves in, and it didn't kill the emersion too much for me. If it was a Hollywood blockbuster, sure you would have expected better, but for a low budget B-movie they did a decent job.

Storyline-wise though, whilst it was a typical plane hijacking scenario, it was decent enough and for a good 1 hour 15 odd minutes was a fairly respectable story that unfolded, but then in the last 15 odd minutes everything seemed to go batshit crazy with attempts to bring the plane down and that's where the B-movie nature of this film really started to expose itself. Aside from that though, and in the preceding 1 hour odd leading up to it, it was all pretty standard stuff  that you would have expected from a mainline studio film and despite the total wackiness at the end it was engrossing and enjoyable enough even if it did stray into amateur territory every now and again.

I will never knock a movie if it's a trier. I've said that before. And Airline Disaster was a trier. It was a cookie cutter aircraft disaster movie, there wasn't really anything new it brought to the table here, but I felt like it was at least trying to be it's own movie to a degree and I could feel there was genuinely some care and attention applied to this production here to try and make a competent and enjoyable film. It may have been entirely handicapped by the low budgetness and forced to include the B-Movie tropes in order to cater to it's target audience, but this felt alot like the intention was to make an enjoyable movie and not try and cash in on the latest cinema blockbuster or turn a quick coin with a bait and switch tactic. I enjoyed this and honestly would watch it again. Incredibly strong 2 out of 5.