6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
If McClane was a woman, October 9, 2001
This review is from: Air Rage (DVD)
Don't judge a DVD on the cover! Air Rage's main character isn't Matthew Marshall (Ice-T) but the stewardess played by Kim Oja. Unlike most "feminine Die Hards", who are poor actresses spending most of the movie in the buff, Kim keeps her clothes on (except for a tame striptease at gunpoint) and shows us real acting talents, portraying a courageous, yet vulnerable, girl next door who finds herself fighting an elite force of rogue marines. Another good surprise are the characters' personnalities which are not caricatured (the only exception being the unbearable passenger). As for the script, despite many implausibilities, the suspense works well and some twists are really unpredictable. A good B-movie!
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not worth the electricity it takes to view it, January 9, 2005
This review is from: Air Rage (DVD)
The highlight of the movie: Kim Oja is cute and she is a serviceable actress. It's all downhill from there.
Some have noted that this movie uses tons of stock footage. Not surprising since if they had a budget of more than $10,000 it doesn't show up on the screen. The FAA will let movies shoot some background and limited principal shots in its air traffic facilities, but the producers here don't even bother. They just badly dress up a room with stuff that has no relation to reality. The action is supposed to take place on a 747, but they couldn't even spend the money to shoot the cockpit scenes in a real 747 or rent one of the mockups that have appeared in numerous other movies. The cockpit is an obvious thrown together cheap set done by someone who has absolutely no idea of what they're depicting. Poorly directed, indifferently acted (except by Ms Oja) and completely unresearched.
In order to not either laugh or throw something at the screen when you watch this, you have to have no knowledge of aviation, air traffic control, the military, piloting requirements, what anything in a cockpit is, the military, guns, how humans breathe (you can breathe without aid at 10,000 feet, there's no reasons to rapidly descend from there), security, etc. Come to think of it that describes the writers. For example, in the big climax, you're expected to believe that every air traffic controller knows exactly how to fly a 747 and can teach virtually anybody how to land it and that your average flight attendant knows where all the controls are and just how to work them. In this big sequence, the writer and didrector don't even bother to learn what controls do what to attempt to inject even a modicum of realism in an unbelievable sequence Controller: "Now pull that throttle back as hard as you can". Whereupon the flight attendant pulls back only one lever (there are four on a 747, one for each engine) which isn't a throttle lever anyway. There is not even the slightest attempt in this movie to get anything right. So, this movie does exactly what the plane would do in real life: Crash and burn.
Yes, Passenger 57 and Executive Decision (from which this movie copies) weren't very realistic either, but at least they tried, and if you could get by the silliness were exciting. This movie doesn't even bother, and neither should you.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
air rage: you'll be raging too if u rent this stinker, July 26, 2001
This review is from: Air Rage (DVD)
air rage left me wanting to stick my head out the window and yell, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to RENT anymore". Ice-T stars as a good guy for a change in this combination rip off of Executive Decision/ Passenger 57. Fred Olen Ray directs (under one of his many Psuedonyms) incorporating initial test flight footage of the Boeing 747 as the plane hijacked by an ex marine (Colonel Sykes portrayed by Cyril O'Reilly) out for vengence against the judge who sentenced him to life at Leavenworth. Ice-T plays Marshall, who boards the plane via the exact same device used in Executive decision to save the passengers and Marine General who initially sentenced Sykes to jail. (Apparently all the Military transport planes and lear jets were full that day.) Ice and his band of horrifically inept "rescuers" get mowed down with aplomb by the bad guys in a close range firefight with machine guns that lasts a good thirty seconds(only Ice survives). Miraculously, none of the bullets goes through the fuselage, cockpit window or into the pilot. The bad guys in turn get picked off one at a time by a stewardess (one actually bashed to death with a coffee pot). The cast does a good enough job, but ultimately the film is brought down by a less than credible script wraught with holes big enough to fly a 747 through. Ray proves himself once again to be a master of stock footage, but this becomes one of the undoings of the film when footage of F-16s are shown while being referred to by people that should know as F-15s. Look for it soon at 3 AM on HBO.
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