Air Speed
by Robert Tinnell
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Bronwen Booth, Elisha Cuthbert, Joe Mantegna, Lynne Adams, Russell YuenDirector: Robert Tinnell
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 89 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-06-22
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Platinum Disc
Movie Reviews of Air Speed
Movie Review: Another Plane with Helpless Passengers in Jeopardy
Summary: 3 Stars
There have been quite a number of movies about aircraft in jeopardy where the pilots are disabled or the plane's controls are too damaged to fly the plane. We saw this plot in "Airport '75" and in "Air Force 1." This time a lightning strike has damaged the plane and knocked the pilots out. The same lightning strike ripped a hole in the side of the plane and disabled two of the three passengers, leaving 13-year-old Nicole Stone to fend for herself on the disabled plane.
At the beginning of the movie we learn that Nicole's father Raymond (Joe Mantegna) and mother Marylin (Lynne Adams) have been so focused on starting their business that they have been neglecting poor little rich girl Nicole. Nicole is on her way to mom and dad in the winter, in mom and dad's private plane, when the plane encounters a thunderstorm. Up to this point the movie was reasonably plausible.
The pilots decide it might be wiser to go around the thunderstorm. Unfortunately, the pilots made this decision after they were in the thunderstorm, and a bolt of lightning wreaks havoc on the plane, knocking out the pilots and playing can opener with the fuselage. Nicole had been fortuitously fooling around with the first aid kit and was wearing oxygen when all this happened, so she is the only person still in good condition after the lightning strike. Unfortunately, the first aid kit smacked the other two passengers of the plane, injuring both.
Passenger and guardian Andrea Prescott (Bronw?n Booth) regains consciousness long enough to get to the cockpit, but she is ineffective and passes out again. Nicole is accidentally able to communicate with the control tower of the airport where the plane is headed. The control tower convinces the Air Force to send a KC-135 to try and board the plane mid-air and transfer passengers to the KC-135. At this point in the movie the implausibilities mount one after another. The cockpit of the KC-135 has a few instruments, as opposed to a real KC-135 cockpit. The interior of the 727 appears to be much bigger than the real thing. The cable used to connect the two planes frays in minutes. If real Air Force people were conducting this operation they would have been court-martialed.
Soon after the third person is transferred from the 727 to the KC-135, the cable frays where it is attached to the 727 and the winch back at the KC-135 pulls the Air Force person in the 727 out of the plane and into free fall. Lucky for him he was wearing a parachute.
During all the action the radio in the plane shot sparks and died, but Nicole belatedly remembers that Andrea has a cell phone. Nicole uses the cell phone to call the tower and say how she was afraid and mom and dad reassure her that she was going to pull through; a tender moment that can bring tears to your eyes. Nicole then bucks up and tries to figure out how to turn off the autopilot (which the air traffic controller assures everyone in the tower would require an aeronautical engineer to do), fly the plane, and then land, without ever having driven a car. Can Nicole do all this in the last fifteen minutes of the movie? Watch and find out.
There are moments when the acting is reasonably good, but as the tension escalates, so does the bad acting. There was a point where I was tempted to stop watching, but I had to see this movie out. After the overacting that occurred after the two planes separated, the movie settled down and the ending did capture my attention.
Movies that gloss over technical details a lot annoy me, and this movie does that to excess. Essentially, it would have been impossible for the two planes to fly as close together as they did (scoffers would ask how refueling occurs - two different altitudes; the 727 and the KC-135 were at the same altitude for some time, only yards apart; the turbulence from the four-engine KC-135 should have caused significant flight problems for the 727). The other aspects shown, such as having someone crawl up the landing gear while the plane is in flight, should have been a nightmare in the 200+ mph wind stream. But, if you can ignore the numerous implausibilities, and you can make it to the ending, it turns out to be an okay movie.
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