Air Marshals - Horrorflug ins Ungewisse

I briefly looked at the other user comments for this movie before posting my own. Yes, this is too close to EXECUTIVE DECISION for its own good. Yes, there are laughable bits like how they misspell a certain country's name in the first few minutes. And there are other things, like how the terrorist's activities are a bit too uncomfortably close to what has happened in real life. Plus there's the fact that much of the movie is shot with a jiggly camera to simulate turbulence I guess, but is VERY distracting. The movie is full of flaws, yes. But at the same time, I can't say I was BORED with this movie. The bad parts of the movie are often entertaining in their own right. And there are some action sequences (like hand-to-hand combat) that aren't that badly done. This movie is probably too flawed to actively seek out, but if you come across it on a slow day, it just may make 90 or so minutes pass by.

If you like fake Hollywood cookie-cutter movies, this is the film to beat. Despite being overtly explicit with its support of racial profiling and portraying Muslim Arabs as terrorists and big hunky white guys as heroes, the plot line is overly-predictable and the characters shallow and annoying. The acting isn't bad, nothing too amateurish though. Certainly written in the post 9-11 heyday, continuing the Hollywood stance of marginalizing targeted branded minorities of the sorts done in Air Force One and True Lies. Also, the camera shakes throughout the movie, simulating the plane flying through air - gets annoying.

Echoing the more caustic remarks of the other reviewers, but on a single point; the first scene in the film is a title to give us the setting: "Lybia." Wrong! (It could be worse. Later they could have spelled Europe, "Eupore.")

Going to the next scene, we see a Lt. Col. in front of a map showing locations and on which to map progress: "Libya." So glaring accuracy errors pointed out by other posters aside, even the most uninitiated in military matters or warfare will see that a major faux pas is committed in the first five minutes of the film. Oh well, I got the used DVD for $3, so I don't have a lot invested. I am just hoping as I view it now, that I can overlook the errors of the other posters and get $3 in value from it.

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.

There is not one category in which I can rate this movie positively... but I'll try anyway.

Plot: Nope. Other posters have beaten this one to death.

Military accuracy: My ROTC friend kept screaming that the Special Forces guys were using the wrong guns. He also tells me that the Navy doesn't use F-16s. I'll take his word on all that. I was annoyed at the clumsy way in which the alleged elite troops crouch-walked towards the hostile gunmen near the airport. Also, the fact that a White House fund raiser was authorized to make decisions involving missile strikes on civilians rather bothered me.

Physical accuracy: This just totally lost me. The plane didn't depressurize, nor did oxygen masks deploy, when the window blew out (a good half hour after it was shot, mind you). The CGI plane kept pitching and yawing at angles that can't happen. The shooters would frequently aim at other things (like the floor), yet their targets would fall back, shot in places only a magic bullet could reach. The list goes on.

Acting: Ha. The generic terrorists, who spoke perfectly articulated English, were so boring in their desires that I often wondered why they were even bothering. The "scared passengers" were more annoyed than anything, which made their presence annoying to the viewers. And Mr. Shirtless Dean Cain Wannabe was just sad.

Fight sequences: Competent stage acting, better than some films I've seen, but in no way what you'd call "good."

Plane realities: All wrong. I like how the pilot was from the school of flying that teaches top speed landings, without wing flaps, and while pointing the nose down. The internal layout of the plane did not come close to matching the external CGI shell. The hurricane-sized storm they fly through takes all of a minute and a half to get through. The speed at which they are tracked on the map (using a transponder that was shut off) is ludicrously fast. And I'm sorry, but the ability to land a prop lane in an IMac flight simulator should not convey any skill to pilot a commercial jet.

Sequels: Okay, so this is the one area that I can say something good. There is no sequel to Air Marshal. However, there are other films in the American Heroes series to which Air Marshal belongs.