Yes I saw this. I wasn't going to since it's really not my kind of movie but the hype was there and when I had last looked, Rotten Tomatoes had a good rating for it, not so much now, and I understand why.
Ok, I went in with the right expections, all set from the title, there's a plane, and there are snakes on it. And Samuel Jackson. The setup was pretty economical. Some guy witnessed a crime boss killing someone in Hawaii and Jackson the FBI agent is getting him to LA to testify. The crime boss wants him dead, so snakes on a plane. Now they do mention enough stuff to cover enough details of a stupid plane. The flight is over the pacific so landing in water isn't a great choice. The snakes are on a time release so they are at the half-way point. There are a lot of snakes and they crawl around the guts of the plane and might bring the whole plane down, so it avoids the question (raised in the film) how do they know they'll bite the witness. Oh and they also say that the cold blooded snakes defeated the detection techiques (though they used dogs and the dog carried on the plane barks at the snakes.
But look, it doesn't really matter, this is snakes on a plane. The above just shows they did the minimum to help you suspend disbelief. The problem is they didn't do much more. The big flaw is there is no sense of time or pacing. These are pretty important things in a thriller. There's not a lot of building of tension. Things are started and then kinda forgotten. E.g., Sam Jackson and Julianna Margulies are piloting the plane (the real pilots are perhaps the dumbest ever) and trying to pull up from a dive at 17,000 feet. Cut to the cabin and various stuff happens. Ten minutes later cut to the air traffic controllers who say the plane is under 1,000 feet. Finally cut to the cabin and they're straining and pull up a few hundred feed from the water. Where were any of the jump cuts to show them straining and not succeeded? They only way we knew the plane was diving was that a Moutain Dew can was rolling.
This could have been stupid fun. But there's only a little fun. Basically things that fit into throwaway scenes, but not anything significant. Oh and don't get me started on the plot about getting the anti-venom. Avoid this film.
3 comments:
I think perhaps what this movie was missing was Ted Striker at the controls.
You'd better tell the Captain we've got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital.
A hospital? What is it?
It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now.
At one point they did show a long shot of the airport terminal (from several blocks away if you will). The background sound was "The white zone is for loading and unloading..." I was the only one in the theater laughing.
"Yes I saw this."
Super. Cracked me up. Skipped the rest of the review for now.
Post a Comment