Airline Disaster

Introduction

The Asylum are responsible for many movies, most of them dire. Their goal is to be able to release a new film every two weeks and with ambitions like that, you know that there's going to be more duffers than not. This is the same group who managed to persuade me that Mega Piranha was a great B-movie, so what about their latest, Airline Disaster?

Airline Disaster is based around the maiden flight of a brand new passenger airliner, I think it's called the 787 but really can't be bothered to watch it again to find out. This aircraft is state of the art and essentially leaves the crew redundant other than take-off and landing the giant aircraft. Anyway, it turns out that someone wants to sabotage the maiden flight and that someone is a group called the Aryan Brotherhood - presumably because they needed a large-ish group of terrorists and there weren't enough Muslim-looking actors willing to appear in this tosh. Anyway, with typical lax security around the maiden flight of a new aircraft, the Aryan Brotherhood manage to sneak a number of weapons aboard the plane whilst disguised as ground crew. At the same time as this is happening, a couple of members of the Aryan Brotherhood also kidnap the pilot's family.

Nothing seems to be too far amiss to the rather docile sky marshal on the flight initially, despite a large number of passengers who have small plasters under their right eye (a cunning disguise for the teardrop tatoo that signifies membership to the Brotherhood). Luckily there happens to be a more active female Secret Service agent on board who moves quickly and manages to hide in the huge cargo hold just prior to the terrorists ripping off their plasters en masse and taking control. Bizarrely, the terrorist leader doesn't have a plaster but finds he can talk on video phone directly to the female US President, situated quite handily in the centre console of the flight instrumentation, whereby he lists his demands. Well, demand really - he wants ten Aryan Brotherhood colleagues released from prison or else...

Picture

It should already be clear that the budget on this film is not that high. It should therefore not come as any kind of surprise that the CGI on Airline Disaster falls far short of the quality it should, in fact I've seen more realistic CGI on Amiga games. Even if the CGI looked more realistic, the events happening with the CGI are clearly not. A cargo hold door blows and takes an engine from under the wing clean off, no further damage to the wing integrity - even when said wing crashes through various obstacles prior to the end such as the Washington Monument. There are also continuity errors aplenty such as the three escorting USAF aircraft - one is blown up when the airline jettisons fuel, then it's back in the picture and then disappears again. It's all highly laughable really...

Overall

There are films, such as Mega Piranha, that are so bad that they're pretty good. Airline Disaster is so bad that it's just sucks, and sucks big time. I cannot find any redeeming features in this film at all. The plot is an attempt at something complicated and worthwhile but is so full of holes that it would rival any Swiss cheese. It's not an Airline Disaster, it's just a disaster.

These films generally have one recognisable star in them and in this case it's Meredith Baxter, you might remember her as Michael J Fox's mum in Family Ties. She plays the US President and sister of the hijacked pilot, whose relationship appears to only be there in order for them to pass coded messages to each other. Baxter is backed up by the most incompetent Chiefs of Staff ever depicted on celluloid and they are in charge of the worst technology seen. There are two secret Government weapons used in this film and both are so laughable, you'd expect to see them in some kind of spoof film (which this most definately isn't, despite it's awfulness). The first is a system that will allow the military to take control of any civilian aircraft and fly it, this consists of a laptop and large joystick. The second is a killer satellite armed with a laser that supposedly has pinpoint accuracy but when fired at the airliner not only misses and destroys one of the remaining USAF fighters but also several ground targets within a city area. And not so much as an 'oops' in reaction from the Chiefs of Staff...

If that wasn't bad enough, there's the band of FBI men on the trail of the kidnappers on the ground. The acting is so wooden that you could quite easily take a couple of these actors and make a nice table and chair set from them. Not to mention that every bad guy (and gal) has to look like your archetypal bad guy, making the whole thing almost panto-like rather than suspenseful.  In Mega Piranha, the acting was done in such a way that you almost believed it was a spoof, here it's seriously serious and that's just too serious.

Don't waste your time...