SOS Vol 534

This movie unrolls as if the producers had seen both the "Flying High" (aka "Airplane") movies and then immediately decided to make a serious movie based very heavily on what they saw.

A previous imdb critique of "Sphere" had Sharon Stone's delivery sounding like she was reading her lines as a hostage with a gun held to her head. In this movie, most of the actors deliver their lines like that; or maybe that they're seeing them for the first time ever on a teleprompter.

The good-guy copilot is cheerful and likeable, the bad-guy captain is arrogant and immediately dislikeable. The stewardesses smile brightly at each other as they chat. And on the first meeting of the featured passengers, straight away you could tell who would not live to see the end of the movie. See what I mean? It's altogether far too much like "FH".

The purpose of the savage dog in the cargo compartment escaped me completely.

The computer-generated images of the plane in flight are quite good, but they're not enough to rescue this movie. It was mildly entertaining, but no more than that.

**SPOILERS**Eric Roberts in one of his rare good-guy roles as 1st officer Mike Hogan is very good as a suspended pilot who's given a second chance to redeem himself under the most dangerous and trying of circumstances.

Waiting for a Trans-Atlantic flight back to New York in London Mike is spotted by the airport manager of AJA airline, Mikes former employer, Arc Davis, Andrew Gillis, and asked if he could come on board as 1st officer since the plane, flight 534, is already two hours late and it's co-pilot isn't showing up. Mike is on administrated leave for crash landing a passenger plane at Boston's Logan Airport when he was supposed to fly the plane to it's original distention. what the board of inquiry wasn't told was that the plane was short on fuel and would have crashed, if Mike kept it airborne, killing everyone where by crash-landing the aircraft he saved all on board. Given a second chance Mike later runs into the same cut & save policies from AJA that caused him to lose his license to fly.

With the planes captain Jack Brooks ,Kevin Jumbinville,not wanting to wait any longer and with a cargo door dangerously unhinged Flight 534 takes off. Airborne at 30,000 feet all hell breaks loose as the giant passenger plane flies straight into an North Atlantic storm as the cargo door is torn out, causing the inside of the plane to decompress, knocking out Captan Jack as well as a number of passengers and leaving Mike Hogan all alone at the wheel with the planes fuel supply quickly being depleted.

Standard heroics with Mike and his former girlfriend cute and frisky flight attendant Katy Philips, Alexandra Paul, taking over the co-pilot controls as he replaces the wounded and unconscious Captain Jack as Flight 534's pilot. Turning the plane around in mid-flight Capatin Mike steers the aircraft to the nearest landing site before he runs out of fuel and crashes into the Atlantic: foggy and windswept Keflavik Airport in Iceland.

Besides Mike & Kathy there's also fugitive murder being brought back to stand trial in the US, Grant Blyth, Dean McDermott, who later, after he becomes religious, aborted his plan to skyjack the plane and risked his life to shut the cargo door. Thus giving Captain Mike the ability to turn and try to land the aircraft.

Besides being a fugitive from the law Grant is also a computer whiz who's able to jump the planes wires and allow it to be flown manually by Mike,who's not at all that impressed with the planes modern computer technology, and not blindly by instrument control and thus be able to land it safely at Keflavik Airport.

There's also the sweet and able air traffic controller at Keflavik Sara, Leah Pinsert, who guided the flight to safely in almost zero visibility. You would have thought that the very qualified but conceded Captain Jack would have risen to the occasion, like almost everyone else in the movie did,when things got dangerous and out of control but he did the exact opposite.

Wanting to take the control of the aircraft away from the very able and courageous Mike Hogan Captain Jack almost caused the plane to crash with his moronic antics. Which were nothing more then to re-inflate his very bruised ego that was busted by Mike being able to do a much better job of flying, and landing, the aircraft then he did.

So I'm scanning the Dollar DVD Rack one afternoon at Wal-Mart, wondering what offerings it might have for me...the title "Rough Air" jumps out at me. An obviously made-for-TV air disaster movie starring Eric Roberts (Julia's ne'er-do-well brother) and Alexandra Paul (of "Baywatch" fame, though to me she'll always be "The Virgin Connie Swail" from "Dragnet")? This DVD cover even has the audacity to rip off the tag line from "Alien," saying "At 30,000 Feet, No One Can Hear You Scream!" SOLD! A few nights later I give "Rough Air" a spin and y'know what? It's actually a decent (although totally unoriginal) flick, but I couldn't help noticing its similarity to the classic disaster-film parody "Airplane!" In fact, it almost seems as if "Rough Air's" screenwriters took the basic plot of "Airplane" and decided to make their own non-humorous version out of it. The two major characters are the disgraced pilot (Roberts) whose last flight ended in disaster, and his estranged stewardess girlfriend, both of whom end up on the same plane when mid-air disaster strikes and the pilots are incapacitated. Of course, Roberts is the only other person on board who can fly a plane, so it's up to him to get everyone back on the ground safely. When Stewardess Ex-Girlfriend is asked to help out in the co-pilot's seat, I immediately had flash backs to Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty landing the doomed airliner in "Airplane" while trading sight gags and one liners with Lloyd Bridges in the control tower, but they keep things on the straight and narrow in "Rough Air." (I kept waiting for them to inflate "OTTO" the automatic pilot, but no such luck.) Do you even have to ask if they'll fall back in love again by the time the plane lands? :) "Rough Air" was an entertaining enough diversion for a rainy evening. If air disaster movies are your thing, it's worth the dollar. For the casual viewer, you can do a lot worse.

After sitting through this movie, I know that I can sit through anything. In a few simple words, It was poor. I explain my reasons below as to why I believe this.

The movie uses a lot of cliches, which you tend to think to yourself 'oh no, not this again!' as you have seen in another air-disaster movie. It also fails to give you any surprises or really bad compromising positions, because you get 'warned' about them before they happen. Warned in inverted commas because it is not a direct in-your-face warning but more of a subtle one, so that if you are concentrating slightly, you will get what's about to happen.

There is obviously a romance, which I think could have been left out and we, the public, would not miss a thing. Another thing that struck me was how they all seemed to remain quite calm on the plane, even though terrible things keep happening!

More screaming and a more tense atmosphere were needed to make this movie ten times better. Definitely not a recommended movie, but more of a I-dont-know-what-to-do-this-Sunday-so-I'll-watch-a-movie !

I really liked this movie. It's a simple story with a airline full of passengers and something goes wrong. A trpical film about airline tragedies. Roberts and paul are good actors and show it. Like I said if you want a simple story about a airline tragedy just rent one of these films. They are all the same. It's out on DVd and a must for me because of the great Eric Roberts! Out of 4 stras I give it 3 stars.