Catastrophe en plein ciel

COLLISION COURSE is another cookie cutter disaster/thriller movie from Fred Olen Ray. I noticed that Jason Bourque, the man responsible for directing such movies as ASTEROID: FINAL IMPACT and DOOMSDAY PROPHECY, helped to write the script. Unsurprisingly, this is the sort of film shown on the SyFy Channel, a safe, bland, and extremely derivative type of movie that copies pretty much every plane thriller in existence.

The story is about solar flares and the havoc they're wreaking here on Earth. Some people are trapped on an out-of-control passenger plane when the pilot is killed by a flare and the co-pilot is knocked out cold. The only person with the power to save the passengers and crew is a writer who knows a thing or two about flying planes.

It's amazing that a film with a potentially exciting premise like COLLISION COURSE can be so dull. Fred Olen Ray is up to his old tricks here, incorporating stock footage of expensive stuff (i.e. explosions) from other movies and generally fumbling the non-existent suspense. An ageing Tia Carrera is the best actor they can come up with and her acting is very poor.

They're just happens to be a vicious dog on the airplane in the cargo hold. Dialogue is awful! Srcipt is junk! ATC jargon is all wrong. The plane autopilot is disabled and in a dive at one point and at another point is a plane coming at them and they bank right but the directional gyro shows straight and level all the time! I can't watch this anymore

Sometimes you know with 99,9% certitude you'll be watching a dumb and terribly bad movie, but you persevere for personal reasons anyways. Literally everything about "Collision Course" screams out it's an inferior B-movie (not in the least the prominently featuring label of production company SyFy-Channel), but I wanted to see it because I have a fondness for disaster movies set on airplanes or airports, and because Tia Carrere is one the - admittedly many - hot actresses I had a crush on in the 1990s because of her cool roles in "Wayne's World" and "Showdown in Little Tokyo". She still looks gorgeous!

"Collision Course" is mind-numbingly bad, but you have to admit one thing. When director Fred Olen Ray goes over the top, he does it tremendously! Everything goes in the script of this action/disaster flick that simultaneously also wants to be a heartbreaking family drama AND an allegory against racial prejudices. Unannounced solar flare storms destruct all technical equipment in the USA and seriously mess up the airline traffic. Pilots get electrocuted and die, auto-pilot systems break down, radio & radar connections are lost. Luckily, there's a successful female novelist aboard the flight from Chicago to LA, and she can perfectly fly - and spectacularly land - a plane because her deceased husband once showed her how in a flight simulator many years ago. What are the odds! Will she be able to concentrate, though, because she must also face racist redneck passengers and an aggressive dog in the cargo that only listens to commands in German.

It's a horrendous movie, obviously, but it guarantees undemanding entertainment, especially if you watch it with one or several buddies and accompanied with beer. The most astonishing element of the script is how calm and disciplined the vast majority of passengers on this plane are. These people witness how a dead pilot is dragged from the cockpit to the back of the plane, they literally see the co-pilot dying in the arms of an incompetent med-student and find themselves in the middle of a fight between a redneck and a Muslim accused of terrorism! But how do the passengers react? They politely remain in their seats and do not panic at all. That is beautiful. In reality, pure chaos would kill everyone aboard before the plane even has the chance to crash.

Bad acting, bad script, bad special effects, bad.... Everything. Tia must have been desperate for money. Also, her face looks very fat. Not worth your time. Skip this one.

'Collision Course' tells the story of a plane which is hit by an EMP due to a solar flare. The pilot is killed, the co-pilot injured and the electronic systems including the auto-pilot are badly damaged. Kate Parks (Tia Carrere) is a passenger on board; she was married to a pilot and wrote a book about airplanes, so at least she knows a little bit more about flying than the other passengers. Jake Ross (David Chokachi, whom I remember from 'Witchblade') is happy about any help he can get from her, because another plane is, as the title mentions, on a collision course...

The characters get some background story, since somehow between one emergency and the next, they find time to think about personal trouble with their family members. 'Collision Course' certainly doesn't win any prizes for innovation, but it's OK. I voted 6 of 10.