Air Marshal (2003)
A commercial jet plane has been hijacked by a group of terrorists who don't realize that a U.S. Air Marshal, Brett Prescott (Dean Cochran), is among the passengers. The fate of dozens of people lies in the hands of Prescott, who must forge a one-man war against the hijackers destructive plans.
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Reviews
Don't listen to the negative reviews
Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful
Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay
It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.
Others have already pointed to the stereotypes in connection with 9/11. I will focus on tech details of the aircraft. An American crew that operates a simulated (Russian) Tupolev 134 with a Bulgarian registration! They even had an elevator in the plane to make the audience believe this was a 747. The designer of the cockpit must have been either delirious or suffer from another major psychiatric disorder. That also goes for the special effects people. The airplane movements were totally unrealistic and probably the result of a doped flight simulator sequence. The film was aired by a commercial TV-station. It was enough to switch off after 10 minutes. It couldn't be more incredible.
Really, the five stars are due to the efforts of the choreographer and screenwriter alone, due to some nice-looking fight work (the fistfight in the hold with one fire axe wielding terrorist is a very nice piece of action) and some clever ideas in the script. The concept of a power struggle among the terrorists, right down to the fact that there is only five guns for six hijackers, is a definite step in the right direction, and should have been fleshed out more. It was a plot thread that caught my interest immediately. The rest of the film is poorly handled. Cinematography is poor, almost ruining the good choreography I praised earlier.The special effects team didn't even try. Additionally, a character who shares my first name is shot and killed helping the titular character escape, a sacrifice that goes completely unnoticed and unappreciated by him. That kinda bothered me.All in all, I can think of worse uses of 90 minutes.
I really don't know how somebody can break off this movie like the Simeon did, there are worse movies.This is an action movie, has enough suspense, action and tension in it. Oke maybe the actors are not all that quality, but they played there roles well especially the terrorists. That's why I think this is a good movie, not for the theater, but it's sure more then good enough for a television movie.So if you love some action and tension in an airplane, this is a movie you would like. It's not great, but surely more then average and good enough to pass some TV hours.
It's great to see that using a flight simulator PC game enables a small kid to control a high-tech, partially crippled jet airliner in real life. Imagine how much more secure I'll feel next time I fly!Also: if any airliner shook that much for the entire flight, I'd be thinking about NEVER flying on one of those planes again. Or did the cameraperson have some sort of nervous twitch? =)