Crash Landing (2006)

It is a performances centric movie

Excellent but underrated film

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This was a run-of-the-mill kidnapping on an aeroplane movie. Though not the best of them, it's not the worst. I didn't find it funny, for those that did it may have been laughable, but it certainly isn't up there of being that bad it's that laughable. Maybe it was also because their attempts at humour and story were not exactly on key or in the right place. At least the group of young people on the plane were young adults in their twenties rather than teenagers which could have been dead annoying. As I said, not the best but not the worst. Worth watching at least once and you can decide for yourself.

Someone dusted off one of the old Airport scripts and decided to make a film of it in 2005. Though it was a genre left in the Seventies I have to admit that while quite unrealistic it sure did make for some exciting viewing.Billionaire Kevin Dobson charters a jumbo 747 for his bratty and spoiled daughter Briane Davis and the passengers are her equally spoiled and rich friends on a private party from Los Angeles to Sydney, a nice 13 hour flight. Hired to go along is Major Antonio Sabato, Jr. who is on ice as it were waiting out a hearing about a difficult Crash Landing he made.Who'd have thought his piloting skills as well as fighting skills would be needed. A group of terrorists kill the flight crew and board in their disguises and take over the plane. The object being one hefty ransom for Davis from Dobson. In that really big plane Sabato leads Davis to safety and then starts doing a number on the terrorists that would make Lorenzo Lamas sit up and take notice.Also helping out on the ground is an army team on a small atoll led by Michael Pare who race against time to clear a runway.I have to admit the film while not the greatest had a nice level of Indiana Jones type excitement. All the film needed to be an Airport sequel was George Kennedy as Joe Patroni.

The plane is a 747 Jumbo. The cockpit is located on the upper deck on a 747. In the movie the pilots do not climb the stairs in the 1st Class cabin to reach the cockpit. They walk to the front of the 1st Class cabin and through doors into the cockpit. What a gaff !!! The front of the first class cabin has a cloakroom for jackets and a TV screen. Beyond that is the radar dome. Before takeoff a 747 is shown to commence the taxi to the runway. On take-off the plane is shown to have only two engines. Areal 747 has four engines. Who was in charge of continuity on this movie ? During the early part of the flight the front of the plane suddenly includes toilets - another farcical gaff !!! After that the front of the plane becomes the rear and vice-versa. At this point I stopped watching. Absolute rubbish!!!

I can't believe that someone actually paid to have this film made. Stupid, unrealistic, and stereotypical. Right from the take off of the massive 747 the pilot pulled the throttles back to increase speed. then you have 5 armed persons with semi to fully automatic weapons firing without so much as one bullet breaching the walls of the pressurized cabin at 38,000 feet. Then once below in the belly of the plane a stray bullet hits a FUEL line and we see the fuel leaking from the side of the plane. The acting was just horrid and forced. There just didn't seem to be any direction. I have seen some pretty horrid B movies in my lifetime but with the names that were in this film I was extremely disappointed.