Mach 2

1st watched 4/4/2001 - 4 out of 10(Dir-Fred Olen Ray): ok movie, with ok acting, and ok action, and ok story. This type of movie has been done before with much more intensity with some of the same things done that are supposed to bring up the tension(Aka. Person flying the plane at the climatic end of movie has never flown before), corrupt politicians at the top (Aka. President Cliff Richardson) with gung-ho save-all action hero(Aka. Brian Bosworth), and weak love interest(Aka. Sharron Whirry). Lame attempt to recycle.

Very brief summary of what I thought about the movie: weak acting, very overused storyline full of things that make little sense, no research at all about airplanes and military procedures. If you have the guts to watch the movie, pay attention in some things like: there are no weapons in the F14s! Where do they get these missiles from? Why do the missiles explode in mid-air without hitting anything? How does the guy explode the car that was following him? How come the American fighters enter French airspace and the only people that see that were the people in the air control? France doesn't have any military force?

With a stream of famous names and faces one would think that this would be a great film. Having watched this garbage I have come to the conclusion that none of the actors actually read the script before shooting began. Cliché after cliché after cliché. This produces wooden performances from some names that should know better.

I am sure their accountants were happy when they paid their cheques into the bank, but anyone who bought/rented this on DVD will feel that their money could have been better spent on a tin of paint. They could have occupied themselves watching the paint dry and would have felt more fulfilled.

DVD and obscure cable/satellite channels will use this trash to fill out their schedules.

My advice ... buy the paint. At least you get a choice of colour.

The acting by Brian Bosworth, Shannon Whirry, Ciff Robertson and Michael Dorn was pretty solid despite the script they had to work with.

Steve Latshaw wrote a very pedestrian script filled with weak clichés and one liners. The dialogue is only part of what brought this film down.

The direction was horrid. Fred Olen Ray, who had directed such classics as Vampire Vixens from Venus and Bikini Drive In, does a horrid job directing this movie. The cuts, the angles, the closeups - everything he did was pedestrian. The music, the sound editing, everything was bad.

If it wasn't for some solid acting from a few select cast members this wouldn't be worth the time. As is, it is a fair little action flick. Just don't expect much. At all ...

I don't what the reviewers who have given this film very low scores thought they were watching. It's an average film to be sure but it's entertaining enough to be worth the time spent watching it. I like that the action is live and not CGI produced, to me CGI always looks too obvious and so isn't interesting. The film starts with an action sequence with furious fight scenes, where it has to be admitted that in the shoot out the two protagonists do expend an implausible amount of ammunition without managing to shoot each other, or anybody else for that matter. But how often have we seen that in action scenes? This first sequence introduces the lead character and his potentially fatal flaw: he's a US Air Force Officer who hates heights and can't fly a plane.

The plot has a few over-used elements: a convoluted government conspiracy which can only be plausible to dedicated conspiracy theorists, terrorists who are not who they seem, and a plane piloted by a person who doesn't know how to fly and has to be told how to land it. I'm sure I've seen that ending in two other films.

But the film's quality is lifted by the good acting of the whole cast. Apart from the most cheesy lines they make the dialogue plausible and the scenes watchable, and they are relatable as characters.