Pete Nessip (Wesley Snipes (Demolition Man)) and his brother Terry (Malcolm-Jamal Warner (American Horror Story)) are escorting a
computer hacker (Michael Jeter (Waterworld))
that worked for the mob, or something, via commercial airliner. While they’re cruising bad guy Ty Moncrief
(Gary Busey (Predator 2)) (what a
fuckin’ name by the way) and his gang of assholes take the plane over, nab the
prisoner and skydive the hell out of there.
The situation would’ve been bad enough for Pete to obsess over and go
rogue ‘n shit until he gets his man but Terry gets killed in the process so now
it’s personal.
This movie guides us through the
undiscovered/under-recognized/mysterious world of skydiving. And what a vast world they have too, I mean skydivers
have their own bars, language, attitude and even look. Like right before Nessip is about to walk
into a sky bar he’s warned he’ll stick out like a sore thumb and stir up
trouble. Sure enough Nessip isn’t in
there one minute when some brawny ass dudes in matching track suits confront
him. They pick him up and throw him over
the bar, but don’t worry he fights them off by kicking one of them in the
balls.
The whole
betcha-didn’t-know-skydivers-were-way-cool-tough-as-nails-outcasts kinda vibe
is fun and sorta interesting. This idea
of highlighting a very specific culture and promoting their badass-ness is done
from time to time and sometimes it works (surfers with Point Break), sometimes it doesn’t (break dancing with Breakin’ (although I do kinda like that
movie)) and sometimes I don’t quite know what to feel (arm wrestling with Over the Top). So they’re saying skydivers, like so many
others, are a misunderstood people that just wanna do their own thang and not
be hassled by the man. Sure I guess so.
And to the film’s credit they stick to the skydiving angle
to the bitter end. We see a lot of
jumps, a lot of non-skydiving parachute use (like BASE jumping and sneakily deploying
someone else’s chute on the ground to fuck with ‘em), a lot of nifty
freefalling stunt work and so on. So
while I would definitely classify this as an action picture there isn’t a ton
of traditional action oriented stuff because most of the thrilling scenes
involve people falling rapidly towards Earth.
It seems you can’t do a whole lot else while that’s happening.
Snipes is his usual very confident self but just insecure
enough to get you in his corner which is always engaging to watch. The woman who he teams up with, Yancy Butler
(Hard Target, Kick-Ass), is the best
damn skydiver there is so naturally you’d expect them to get together. But they don’t. Strangely it’s not even hinted at that
they’re into each other which is really odd.
So is there something more going on here? Of course not every action movie has their
male and female leads hook up but after thinking about it for a minute I
realized that Virtuosity and Eraser are two other 90’s ones with
interracial casting that don’t have the romance aspect. Maybe I’m reading into it too much but it
seems like at that time Hollywood thought we weren’t ready to have two people
from different races become involved with each other in our action films. That’s some serious bullshit Hollywood.
In the end this is only an ok picture which is weird
considering on paper it hits all the notes you’d want like a cop playing by his
own rules, a villain who kills one of his own henchmen to tie up a loose end, a
flashy gimmick that’s used to its full extent, a prison break at 30,000 feet, a
wailing melodic electric guitar soundtrack, clearly shot action sequences,
etc. Yet the whole thing feels a bit
dull and it’s a little hard to pinpoint why.
I dunno I always felt there was a B movie quality to this one but that
doesn’t make any sense. It was totally
an A picture when it came out and Snipes and Busey were still fairly
popular. The answer could be unremarkable
cinematography choices by Roy H. Wager who had shot and continues to shoot
mostly TV. Back in the 90’s TV wasn’t anywhere
near as cinematic as it is today so making the leap to features was probably more
difficult.
You thought I wasn't gonna put one single picture of people skydiving in here, didn't you? |
Anyway if you’re looking for some serious 90’s shit (the
extreme sports focus, Gary Busey in peak cocaine form where he claps his hands
in almost every scene he’s in, Snipes sporting an all white suit with only a
blue t-shirt underneath and round sunglasses, computer hacking, that human
gyroscope thing where it twirls you in a million different directions, a bar
fight and a bathroom fight in the same movie) then dropping into this zone
wouldn’t be terrible. You can find
better zones to drop into though.
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