Sopravvissuti

Picture the scene,me and a buddy are on holidays in Gran Canaria.Its a cloudy day so we decide to stay in our hotel room and sample a random day time film.We flick to channel 6,THE MOVIE CHANNEL.

We settle down to watch a film entitled ANGEL FLIGHT DOWN........sounded promising,I always like watching disaster films especially ones involving planes.We start to watch the film,immediately I recognise David Charvet from Baywatch fame although I'm too embarrassed to tell my mate I actually remember his face so....I keep quiet.The films plot involves a GRIEF-STRICKEN child in need of urgent medical assistance,so urgent,they needed an angel flight,unknown to them,it was going DOWN,hence the title,Angel Flight Down.

Its a snowy night,but they just gotta get that kid(terribly played by Deanna Milligan,for the whole film she makes silly noises that is supposed to portray a sick child)to the hospital.The plane takes off and everything seems fine but ten minutes into the journey,something.......goes wrong.The engine fails.At this point in the review I must point out that the plane going down scene is pretty good with outdoor and indoor cockpit shots of the disaster about to happen.

The plane crashes in the snowy mountains but all inside survive the crash.OK,this review is a bit long winded so I'll cut to the chase,the acting is god awful,terrible,shocking,diabolical. After I watched the film I felt violated.After the plane crash we are left with an hours worth of bilge of a film.The people in the plane try to stay warm and for some reason one of the people gets out of the plane and rants and raves for a bit only to walk back inside the plane for absolutely NO REASON.

Obviously,in the end,all the people in the plane are rescued by live helicopters and David Charvet learns to be a better man blah blah blah.Terrible film.....seriously,how do people who make these films sleep at night?If you want to see a half decent disaster air-plane movie go rent out Alive.

I didn't exactly 'watch' this movie - it was more like rubbernecking. It got so bad in places that it took me precisely three attempts to watch it through to the end, but luckily British satellite movie channels obliged by constantly looping the film. I both like and dislike 'Angel Flight Down'. I'm a sucker for 'true stories', especially those about aviation rescue events. I just wish that the writers had applied dramatic licence in this case, and killed off David Charvet's character. And the young girl's annoying father. Both were highly irritating leading up to, during, and immediately following the mountainside emergency landing. Charvet's character was petulant, selfish, and dense. Charvet himself must have been banking too much on his 'Baywatch' pretty boy status to get him through, but his chubby cheeks and pouting lips merely aggravated his bad acting. The father was incredibly melodramatic and flouncy, especially during the slo-mo shots of the plane's interior during the crash.

The only character I warmed to was the female paramedic, Theresa, played by Patricia Kalember. She was believable, and reserved enough to keep the two 'boys' on the flight in check.

Up until the survivors started to work together to aid their rescue, there were some painful moments. Charvet's aero-paramedic being snotty with the girl's father about his religious beliefs, almost telling him to 'keep it to himself' at one point, when prayer couldn't exactly have hurt anyone at that point. I expected some drawn out 'Ted Striker of Airplane!' backstory about Charvet's character being let down by his once fervent faith in a higher being, with the way the paramedic kept sniping about religion.

The constant harassment of the delirious pilot was another. Kalember's character tells the others that Rick has potentially fatal head injuries. So what does Charvet's character do? Shake the poor guy around, yelling, 'Wake up! Wake up! Where's the EMT? Wake up!' Why they couldn't locate the EMT themselves, by process of elimination, is beyond me. How long had the two paramedics been working around aircraft? And when Rick managed to gather enough faculties together to tell them, 'It's in the back', Charvet's character had to be told twice more, with the qualifier 'The EMT is in the back', before anybody acted on the information!

The actual rescue effort, however, was heartwarming. As Kalember's character narrated, people hardly ever walk away from a mountain crash, and stories of miraculous survivals like the bare facts of 'Angel Flight Down' provided, always amaze and affect me. I've seen better air crash dramatisations, and I've run away screaming from worse. Charvet aside, this was actually a pretty fair representation of a real-life incident.

As a pilot rated in both airplanes and helicopters I was appalled at the gross lack of technical accuracy in portraying the in flight emergency. I can't believe that with all the aircraft used in this film that the producers did not get any technical advice. The engine problem was never accurately portrayed and even a trainee on twin engine aircraft would have known to feather the prop so it would not be windmilling and creating more drag. An emergency locater beacon is required on every King Air aircraft of the type used in the film would have pinpointed the aircraft's location quickly. I hate it when aircraft movies feed more inaccurate information to an audience which may be fearful and unknowledgeable of aviation. The story was also unrealistic when I discussed it with friends of mine who are in the medical transportation field. The producers should be penalized for such an ignorant attempt of a film.

The show took me on a wild ride, not just as far as the action is concerned but also emotionally. We need more T.V. drama like it. "Entertainment" is the key word and Angel Flight Down most definitely did it for me.

I cannot believe a medevac in the north would leave in bad wx without parkas, hats, mitts and felt boots. Who doesn't know you lose the most heat through your head? Would toques really have spoiled the visuals? I couldn't stop watching this stupidity!! Just to see how the story ends.... really.