Reviews

• 3/5 STARS -

It's Airport 1975 meets Friday the 13th in this thriller at 35,000 feet. Set aboard the ultra-sophisticated Boeing 747-200, a serial killer and flight attendant battle for control of the airplane as both his mental condition and the plane's altitude deteriorate.

A group of U.S. marshals is escorting two convicts aboard a nearly empty 747 on Christmas Eve. One convict escapes and kills all of the guards, along with the pilot. (The copilot is taken out just as efficiently by failing to observe the fasten seat belt sign!) After sitting back and letting them kill each other, serial killer Ryan Weaver (Liotta) fills the power vacuum and systematically secures control of the airplane. He has no intention of mounting an escape, however. Because he was already en route to death row, he plans to slowly torture his group of holiday captives while the plane flies itself into the ground.

Flight Attendant Teri Halloran (Holly) will have none of that, and we find ourselves with a far more capable flight attendant than Karen Black (from Airport 1975) at the helm of this 747. A lot can change in 22 years, and this time our flight attendant is strong-willed, empowered, and ready to brandish a gun, if necessary, to defend her safe passage to the ground. But just as significantly, it's the technology that has changed in two decades.

The airplane, the set design, and the special effects steal the show. Airplane buffs will be wowed at the display of real-world commercial jet technology, including the autoland system, which effectively replaces Charlton Heston (from Airport 1975) as the emergency pilot-in-command. Most of these whiz-bang gizmos are already present and functioning aboard commercial jets worldwide. By choosing such a high-tech plane, the producers were able to simplify the plot and omit the flight engineer altogether. He's been replaced by a bank of computers, as is becoming standard practice among domestic carriers.

The reality factor does have to be put on hold rather often, such as when the 747 flips over and our stars are forced to struggle on the ceiling of the cabin. Or when the plane's landing gear becomes entangled in a rooftop restaurant and subsequently scoops up a parked car. The 747-200's autopilot isn't nearly smart enough to recover from either crisis, but it's easy to let the disbelief slide because the visuals are so startlingly fresh.

External shots of the plane are well lit and light-years beyond what we have seen in any other aviation disaster film. Inside the plane, the sets are vibrant and alive with color. Brilliantly lit instrument panels, along with a talkative computer warning system, keep the audience involved. Even the avionics bay is bright and downright inviting!

It's a good thing the director let the art designers run amuck, because the psychosis of our serial killer would've sunk the picture otherwise. This character should have been penned as a standard mental case, but instead he's a serial killer and a sex fiend, which makes for a variety of uncomfortable confrontations between himself and the flight attendants. Women generally do NOT like this movie, primarily because the sexually-charged power struggles are repulsive to a modern temperament. The audience is officially fed up when Teri strips to seduce Ryan, just so that she can hit him in the head. Of course, he regains the upper hand moments later.

If just five minutes of this rubbish had been cut out the film, the result would have been much more satisfying. Liotta demonstrates his rendition of the crazed lunatic very well, and is highly entertaining until the script leads him to overly indulgent pastures. But ultimately, Turbulence is reluctant to decide whether it wants to be an action thriller or a teenage slasher movie. Although it eventually makes the right decision, half the movie has already passed by that point and those who would have abandoned ship, have already hit rewind.

Compared to Airport 1975, Turbulence is at once both a much bigger and a much smaller film. Turbulence has an abundance of top-notch special effects and is a colorful visual assault. Yet, the simple story of a frightened stewardess, struggling to fly a jumbo jet, is lost in this psychotic game of cat-and-mouse. In the world of the seven minute attention span, Turbulence plays by the new rules and thus belays its weakness: it is too youthful to know that by simply sitting back and letting the suspense build, the end result can be so much more satisfying.

• 3/5 STARS -

Dante's Peak is the sleepy little town of 7,000 people which becomes rocked by a volcano. Pierce Brosnan plays the role of the vulcanologist who tries to sound the alarm, and Linda Hamilton is the single mom and mayor who takes notice of the good doctor's warnings.

There's a magical cinematic quality whereby the whole of a good movie is greater than the sum of its parts. In the case of Dante's Peak, however, the whole is about equal the sum of its parts. Despite very strong (and expensive) special effects, Dante's Peak feels more like a TV movie.

The movie begins with every cliché in the book. There's the lone scientist who predicts a disaster, and the boss who silences him to avoid a panic. There's a tourist town whose livelihood is threatened by just the talk of volcanic activity. And there's even the children who disobey orders and head into danger to save a loved one, only to have to be rescued themselves.

After the movie gets started, however, the cliches do take new '90s twists. The mayor of the town is actually the first to listen to the scientist, and she even calls a town meeting where she distributes an `emergency plan.' Our strong lead is a sensitive gent who lost his love to a volcano four years prior, and the mayor is a divorced mom with a mother-in-law who won't come down from the mountain. Unfortunately, the original cliches don't hold up very well when resolved with a modern temperament-instead, they come off as bland and unexciting.

The biggest weakness with this movie lies in the creation and development of the characters. Pierce Brosnan is not a very convincing scientist, and his British accent does little to toughen up a role which needs rougher edges anyway. If he's trying to be the strong, silent type, he comes off more bookish than anything else. And when he loses his temper, he might as well be arguing a call at a tennis match. Across the board, stock characters and a weak script really hurt, such as in the final scene where Brosnan calms the children by promising to take them on a fishing trip, of all things.

The audience simply doesn't care about these people very much, so when the characters wind up in danger, there's little reaction to be had. Where's the depth of these people? For example, where is the mayor's inner conflict when she must decide whether to believe a lone vulcanoligist or protect the interests of a town she has been nurturing for nearly a decade? The movie uses romance between our two leads to dodge these kinds of questions, and that sort of character development wouldn't be missed-as long as it was replaced by some other opportunities for depth. It isn't.

Special effects are first-rate in execution, and they are almost too good. They're a bit too clean and smack of CGI (Computer Graphics Imaging). Often times I found myself thinking, that's a CGI, that's not a CGI, etc. The purpose of digital film enhancement is to fool the audience into not recognizing the enhancement at all, but Dante's Peak fails here.

Dante's Peak romps around the countryside and offers colorful situations of all kinds. And it wins bonus points because it really is fun to watch, particularly for the gee-whiz special effects. But Dante's Peak could've been a lot more than what it is. It's fun, but it doesn't feel `big.' The last half of the movie felt like a string of small action sequences glued together to create the impression of one big action sequence. And in terms of character development, if the producers had simply stuck with the cliches that they started with, the movie might've been a lot better.

• 2/5 STARS -

The operator of a tropical hotel conceals the mounting threat of the island's active volcano when his laissez-faire partner and a renegade oilman start asking questions. When the volcano finally blows its top, a small group of hotel residents make a dangerous trek to higher ground, but not all will survive as the peak spews smoke, fire, and lava across the island.

This relaxed disaster movie signals the end of the first Golden Age of Disaster movies. It is appropriate, then, that it was produced by Irwin Allen and recycles a variety of cliches that spanned the seventies. When Paul Newman and Jacqueline Bisset start sipping wine on the beach with the volcano in the distance, for example, we know to start counting the minutes until the mountain blows.

With both Paul Newman and William Holden playing roles very similar to those in "The Towering Inferno", it isn't difficult to draw parallels between the two movies. "The Towering Inferno", however, was a unique project involving a joint venture between two studios, a huge budget, an all-star cast, and a blockbuster script culled from the best elements of two popular novels. Does When Time Ran Out represent what we should expect from Irwin Allen when all of the cards AREN'T stacked in his favor?

When Time Ran Out harkens back to the drama-heavy days of the original Airport, with a web of infidelity that will make your head spin. Battle lines are quickly drawn between the defensive developer of the island (Franciscus) and a renegade oil driller (Newman) who believes the mountain is, as he puts it, `a powder keg.'

Occasional visits to the volcano's crater provide distraction while the relationships between the characters are cultivated for the disaster. The oilman stirs up trouble when he wants to see for himself that the mountain is safe before drilling in a high-pressure oilfield. However, it's just ridiculous to think that his inspection would involve stepping into a laughable protective capsule and being lowered inside the smoldering volcano. Naturally, the capsule--with a glass floor!--experiences a series of unexplained malfunctions that send him hurtling towards bubbling lava at the bottom of the crater.

It's the kind of special effect that Irwin Allen was famous for from his television days on The Time Tunnel and elsewhere. But the silver screen requires a much greater level of believability than is needed by television. When Time Ran Out contains some of the worst effects in the history of the genre--images which aren't even acceptable for the SMALL screen. What happened to the Master of Disaster?

When Time Ran Out is heavy on talk before the volcano erupts, but the runaway action we were expecting during the buildup simply never arrives. Only two action sequences occur with the Newman followers, and they both involve a large group of people taking a very long time to cross a treacherous path to safety. It's a snooze-fest all around.

The special effects are ho-hum, even though Irwin Allen attempts to diversify the experience with flaming meteors fired from the volcano and a tidal wave that inexplicably levels part of the same island whose shock wave created it! They're not enough. Most of the visuals are clearly pre-existing volcano footage placed on a chroma-key in front of the actors. And the rest of the eruption footage appears to be poorly executed post-production animation.

The lush tropical setting is a refreshing change of pace for most disaster movies, and Jacqueline Bisset and Paul Newman try their best to keep things classy. But an unnecessary cock fight in the village and a preposterous laboratory perched on the rim of the volcano immediately suggest that this movie needs a dose of reality--and adrenalin. The first Golden Age of Disaster Movies closes with this whimper as `time runs out'-- on the genre.

• 1/5 STARS -

A group of astronauts are killed when they witness the collision of two gigantic asteroids near the outreaches of our solar system. A chunk two miles wide breaks off and speeds towards earth, forcing both the American and the Russian governments to link their top-secret missile systems to destroy the meteor. As it approaches, meteorite fragments from the collision reach the earth before the big rock does, and they precipitate several smaller disasters while the scientists race to destroy the `planet killer.'

Meteor has an above-average cast for a movie of this type. Sean Connery plays the lead scientist, and Karl Malden is his boss. Natalie Wood plays the Russian interpreter who helps finesse the very tricky negotiations between American and Russian forces. Henry Fonda is the calm but determined American President, and Martin Landau is the paranoid and protective officer in charge of the American missile system. But even with all of this talent, Meteor manages to squander it.

Very little space will be spent here discussing the plot and dialogue of Meteor. Suffice it to say that the basic plot is acceptable but ignores a number of opportunities to generate more significant emotional payoffs for the audience. It doesn't seem like Hollywood executives had the opportunity to rearrange the plot elements to create the big-screen feel that a movie should have.

The dialogue is likewise weak and begs the question: why did these stars agree to do this movie in the first place? Perhaps they were sold on the concept, but the script punch-up never occurred. However, neither the plot nor the script matters much because the movie is so visually unsatisfying..

Set design is startlingly atrocious. All of the sets are ugly, even for 1979. You won't be truly mortified until you see the Hercules missile control center. The massive rear-projection screens you are accustomed to seeing at NASA (and in all Hollywood spacecraft command centers) have been replaced by large painted panels with occasional flashing lights pushed through from behind.

Any suspension of disbelief which might occur in the first 30 seconds of the movie is obliterated as soon as the first special effects hit the screen. With Martin Landau on board, it's conceivable that he was chosen in the hopes of cutting a deal with the FX crew from Space: 1999. However, the special effects in Meteor would be considered marginal even for a television show of that era. The rockets shine of polystyrene, and multiple decal lines are visible. The meteor itself is a rock from the director's backyard (by his own admission!) and the earthly explosions, for the most part, appear to be represented by a maroon gel placed across part of the camera lens.

The plot conveniently arranges for various meteor `splinters' to strike the earth before the big rock will arrive. As with Earthquake, this creates many opportunities for expensive FX such as an avalanche in Switzerland, a tidal wave in Japan, and the devastation of New York City. Unfortunately, only the latter disaster is integrated into the plot, while only the avalanche and the tidal wave are remotely convincing. The blurry, smoking remains of New York City are so poorly depicted as to be disruptive. And the special effects in space are so incredibly bad that the poor depiction of the NYC meteor strike actually looks good in comparison.

This is an even greater shame because the final live sequence, involving a collapsing underground bunker, is fairly well done and possibly even Earthquake quality. Meteor was originally intended to capitalize on the Earthquake formula for success: a wide variety of big disasters coupled with a big name cast. In this case, however, the survivors end up coated in gelatinous mud as they escape through flooding subway tunnels. All the flailing and dragging looks more like celebrity mud wrestling than anything else.

Meteor is not sure if it wants to be a disaster film, a sci-fi film, or an espionage thriller. It ends up being spread too thinly in every direction, and just there isn't enough plot or dialogue here to sustain the movie in any direction. It's a moot point, however, because the miserable special effects torpedo the picture within the first five minutes, and recovery simply isn't possible after that. Coupled with a premature script and a talented but disempowered cast, Meteor is a truly disastrous film in every sense of the word.

• 2/5 STARS -

How do you get a 747 widebody to the ocean floor without filling it completely with water? Modern jets will float for a half-hour or more, but once they start flooding, they don't stop until the cabin is uninhabitable. The intricate solution to this problem is just the first in a long series of hoops the producers had to jump through after saying, `Let's do a film about a jumbo jet that sinks in the Bermuda Triangle with the passengers still alive inside!'

Airport '77 is the gloomy response to this challenge. Art thieves hijack a specially equipped and highly luxurious private 747 to loot her expensive cargo. In the process of flying stealthily below radar, the copilot/thief (Meredith) strikes an oil drilling platform and loses control of the airplane. After a brief struggle to stay aloft, the jetliner settles onto the surface of the water, but not before a massive storage container tears loose and punches a fatal hole in the forward cargo compartment.

And therein lies the solution to the first problem. Like the customization of a conversion van from the same era, this private jet has been modified to contain a series of individually pressurized cargo holds. When the forward cargo compartment floods, the rest of the plane is left dry. Within minutes, however, the weight of the water pulls the plane to the floor of the ocean, with most of the passengers still alive and plenty of doors and windows leaking ominously.

Airport '77 starts with heavy-handed drama and never lets up. There's not much room for humor in a 747 several hundred feet under the water, but Airport '77 doesn't even attempt to lighten the mood occasionally. Better disaster movies pull the audience from one emotional extreme to another, but on this plane, the dialogue is suffocating even before the oxygen starts to run low. There isn't anyone in charge of bringing hope to the survivors (and the audience).

And despite their occasional humanitarian efforts, this group of super-rich, mostly white passengers does little to elicit sympathy from the audience. Only the head flight attendant (Vaccaro) invites compassion. Her romance with the pilot (a mustache-laden Lemmon) isn't adequately explored, particularly when he volunteers to leave the plane in a risky maneuver that might easily kill him. Meanwhile, virtually the entire support staff of the plane magically disappears so that the drama can focus on the wealthiest and presumably most interesting group aboard.

The tone of this film is gloomy right from the start, and bad cinematography doesn't help. Every room (on the plane or elsewhere) is dark, and every cast member seems to be covered with a thin layer of reflective slime even before the plane sinks! It's as though good lighting and decent makeup were dispensed with just to darken the mood.

The sun-drenched rescue operations offer the possibility of relief from the closed quarters of the plane, but instead we receive an abundance of stock Naval rescue footage. Generous thanks are paid to the men and women of the armed services who assisted in the production of this movie, and we know this to be true because the final third of the movie is so boring.

Airport '77 has the most elaborate special effects of any Airport movie, and they are enjoyable to watch. All of the external effects are clear, and the flooding inside the plane is done as well as can be expected. Aside from the abundance of dark brown furniture (and carpet, and paint, and wallpaper) it's the relentlessly dim lighting that clinches the claustrophobia. Though possibly necessitated by the depth of the plane underwater, the resultant sense of suffocation only disengages the viewer further. The cheap special effects of The Concorde: Airport '79 indicate that the lesson was learned that good effects won't save a mediocre film.

In short, Airport '77 just isn't fun enough. It's a clever premise and the producers went to great lengths to get the plane underwater in a satisfactory manner. But if it's not the weighty dialogue, it's the unengaging Naval training footage, and so the audience quickly discovers that there's really not that much to enjoy here after all. Airport '77 is fun to watch for the crash and flooding sequences (as well as Darren McGavin's dependable character acting), but seat-of-your-pants thrills are best found elsewhere.

• 3/5 STARS -

A family battles for survival as an explosion devastates their cruise ship and punctures its hull. The father must race to free his wife as rising waters threaten them all.

The Last Voyage is fun to watch because it's so OLD. This is the first modern motion picture involving a sinking ship OTHER THAN the Titanic. The movie is squeaky-clean, and Robert Stack is as wooden as a two-by-four as the desperate father. There's not much dramatic tension created here, but that almost seems to be a function of the time period.

This is the final voyage of the U. S. S. Claratin, and her primitive construction becomes critical when a fire in the engine room melts the fuel flow valves in the fully open position. Within minutes, the boiler explodes and creates a very visually satisfying hole blown through every deck of the ship. Of course, this hole separates the family, and when the father struggles to rescue his daughter by trying to cross this bottomless void, we know this movie is going to try hard. And it does.

The special effects are somewhat sparse but exceptionally well done for the period. I was surprised by the level of expensive detail, such as water pouring in through the dining room windows even though they're only visible for a few moments. Dad's first challenge is to rescue his daughter from her perch alongside the path of the boiler. Then he must find a way to free his wife, who lays pinned under several steel beams in her stateroom. This becomes his objective for the remainder of the movie.

A friendly fireman (one who stokes the fires in the engine room) helps Stack get the equipment he will need to free his wife. Meanwhile, the sailors below decks attempt to reinforce the walls of the engine room to prevent the bulkhead from breaching. It does, of course, and that's when everyone really starts to run out of time.

This movie is particularly memorable for its ending sequence, which shows the survivors running down the length of the ship's upper deck, as water splashes onto the floorboards from the sea. This visual is striking, and even a modern audience will wonder how the shot was done; was this a giant set or did the producers simply sink a ship and film its last few minutes above water?

Disaster enthusiasts should see The Last Voyage because it stands uniquely alone in the timeline of movie history. It was the first modern movie based upon people being trapped in an enclosed construction (such as a boat or a building) that was NOT based on a historical event (such as the sinking of the Titanic). More importantly, the plot of the movie was focused on dealing with the disaster, rather than the disaster coming as a big finish to the main story line. This is the formula that dozens of movies would attempt to perfect for the remainder of the century and beyond.

Although it is rather bland, this film is crisp, efficient, and a key turning point for the genre. It represents Hollywood's first try at the modern disaster movie: it features a plot focused on multiple characters escaping from a fictional situation, while fighting for survival amid expensive special effects.