Air Boss

In his hilarious book "Film is Hell", Matthew Howe claims that this movie he shot for Sultan Productions is the worst movie ever made. I've seen many awful movies and while this is one of them, it's certainly not the worst.

Howe's photography is quite good considering the low budget and time constraints. The real footage he shot on a carrier and in actual helicopter training are excellent stock footage although they don't fit into the rest of the film very well. Most of the shots are in focus with just one shot certainly out of focus and a few combat scenes that are strangely blurry. The locations (mostly run down industrial parks) are creepy and the hand-held camera motion is often very good. Some of the sets are not as bad as I expected and almost reach mid-90's cable television quality. And of course the explosions are so good you'll get to see them over and over. Producer/Director/Actor John Christian has a nice restrained acting style which I'm sure he refined over his many low budget productions. Several other actors put in adequate performances. I expected the editing and pacing to bother me more than they did.

What really kills the film is it's obvious that no frame of it was ever intended to be shown in a theater. It's shot full frame, the title cards were obviously added in video, and there are even long fade to blacks that might as well say "Airboss will be right back after these messages!" You never forget that you're watching the lowest-budget television imaginable. There are far too many closeups of actors pointing at stuff and describing it to us, strategically avoiding any background that could tell us where they are. Many scenes appear to be first takes with lots of panning substituting for coverage. The combat scenes have no direction with tanks moving around aimlessly and guns shooting in every direction.

Some of the acting and dialog is terrible. Kayle Watson is good looking but rarely delivers a line convincingly. His acting couldn't buy a role in a Lifetime movie. Caroline Strong has had some success in television but tries too hard with her "tough woman" act which is not helped with the terrible "tough woman" dialog she was given. The moments of painfully bad dialog are numbed by needlessly long scenes of dull exposition but the painful scenes still linger in your mind.

The plot is nothing more than a series of barely-related international crises designed to send our heroes to what appears to be the same location over and over to shoot bad guys, kidnap terrorists, and bring some American justice to the rest of the world. It repeats over and over until the movie is long enough to finally end. This formula is not much different from a season of "24".

I will not be watching any of the sequels.

Crack a beer or roll a joint because this movie is a roller coaster. If The Room is a movie that springs to mind then Airboss is just the movie for you. Will have you dying laughing the whole time.

I had the good fortune of seeing this movie, and I use that term loosely, on German television so I was most likely spared a great deal of terrible dialogue. The other review was correct about consistency, the stock footage switch back and forth between F/A-18 and F-14 footage. A Navy Captain was wearing the wrong size rank insignia. Most of the squadron patches aviators are wearing are U.S. Air Force patches. When an plane is launching off a bow catapult, they depict the pilot saluting a fellow aviator, not the "shooter," and then they depict the throttle being thrown to full as the aircraft is being released from the launch gear. In reality Hornets are on autopilot and pilots hold their hands up to show they aren't mucking things up. This is in many respects a low budget attempt at "Behind Enemy Lines," but that itself was a terrible movie. NEVER, NEVER expend money to watch this film!!! Even if you have the chance to watch it on broadcast or cable television, a drinking game must be involved, that is the only condition under which this movie may seem to be remotely appealing.

I'm happy to accept the limitations of B grade movies. However, this movie is just plain careless in its continuity e.g. parachutists who change their chute before they land. The movie uses stock footage of navy manoeuvres that it tries to force to fit the plot. The same oil storage facility is blown up at both the beginning and end of the film (and it's completely irrelevant to any plot at the end). And for some reason our 'hero' actually stands before a sunrise/sunset at the end (which does blend in with the other corny moments which are supposed to make us relate to the character). Give this one a miss.