Airline Disaster Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		0.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

Airline Disaster Blu-ray Movie Review

Worse than an airport pat-down.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman May 13, 2012

Unacceptable. Insulting. Unbelievable. "Disaster" aptly describes this mind-boggling junk heap of a movie that's awful even by The Asylum's low standards. To be sure, it's no secret what audiences are going to get when it comes to these rip-off features. Bad acting, awful visual effects, unimaginative scriptwriting, lazy direction, and a completely derivative and unimaginative plot are par for the course. Airline Disaster has all of that and more. The movie absolutely insults the intelligence of the audience. Not only is this the worst attempt at a Hijacking Action movie ever made -- it basically rips off the villain angle of Die Hard, the command room scenes of Air Force One, and the sneaking about the plane of Executive Decision -- but this has worse continuity and attention to detail than even childhood amateur movies shot on the family's home video camera. To pass this off as even a semi-professional film is to give even the rank amateur a bad name. The following is a brief rundown of the kind of lazy editing and continuity viewers can expect with a level of acceptability following, "1" being "not a big deal" and "10" being "these filmmakers should save face and retire from the industry immediately" (note: spoilers follow).

• Three fighter jets flank the hijacked aircraft. One is destroyed, but reappears moments later. In the following shots, it's gone again. Acceptability factor: 5.
• A kitchen knife is used to sever the hand of a man carrying an attached briefcase. The knife is bloody. In the next shot, it's clean. Then it's back to being bloody. Acceptability factor: 3.
• A CGI jumbo jet flies at high speed only feet above water. The water remains absolutely still as if nothing is happening. Acceptability factor: 6.
• The film recycles the same shoddy CGI shots time and again anytime a plane exterior is required. Acceptability factor: 5.
• In the film's final moments, the plane takes out the upper half of the Washington Monument. The plane then lands safely on the water. The pilot and his family are reunited, seen standing and hugging in front of an intact Washington monument in the distance. Cut away. Show the reunited family again, standing and hugging in the same spot, this time with the monument showing its damage, and now the downed plane is suddenly in the water immediately behind the people. Remember, this is the plane's pilot reuniting with his family, so the plane's been down the entire time. Yes, the visual effects artists forgot to put the AIRLINE, as in AIRLINE DISASTER, in one of the film's most important shots. Acceptability factor: off the charts.

Insulting.

Neo-Nazis, identifiable via a teardrop tattoo adorning their faces, have pulled off a difficult mission with precision action and unflinching dedication. They've hijacked a radically-advanced jumbo jet that's the brainchild of the StarQuest Program, offering "the best in aerodynamic design to reduce fuel consumption, the most sophistaicated computerized controls," and it yields an enjoyable flying experience to boot. It's the aircraft's maiden voyage, but it's going to be one rocky ride. The takeover of the plane is successful. On the ground, a second group has kidnapped the pilot's (Scott Valentine) wife, son, and daughter as insurance to make sure he cooperates with the every hijacker demand in the air. When the President of the United States (Meredith Baxter) is informed of the situation, she finds herself in a terribly difficult situation, complicated by the fact that the plane's pilot is also her brother. That means that, along with the as-of-yet-unidentified sky marshall, there's also a secret service agent (Lindsey McKeon) on the flight. Can good triumph over evil, or will the government give in to the hijackers' demands or allow the flight -- and every innocent soul on board -- to be shot down?

This movie truly defies logic. There are bad movies, then there are lazy movies, then there are bad and lazy movies, and then there are epically bad and lazy movies. Airline Disaster makes even some in that last category look marginally good. This movie rewrites the bad movie record books with every new scene. It relies on numerous crutches, not the least of which is that when all hope seems lost, military brass suddenly pulls a radically-advanced piece of technology out of its collective and figurative rear end to help advance the story, whether it's technology to control planes, outer space lasers, whatever the plot needs to move ahead. The action is predictable and unimaginative. Worse, even when there's the mere possibility of something exciting, the movie goes all FUBAR. For example, a jumbo jet flying through a downtown skyline is an ambitious stunt. It should be exciting. Even the mega-millions 2012 only attempted that with a small plane, albeit in a crumbling city. In Airline Disaster, the awful special effects and terrible editing shape things so that audiences barely see or understand what's happening, let alone feel the rush of the in-film moment or experience the thrill of watching what should be a pretty cool scene. The entire movie follows suit. It efforts to make things more exciting with a nearly nonstop action-style underscore, but it just gets in the way and annoys audiences rather than juice them up and pull them into the experience.

And of course, there's the usual array of problems as alluded to above. Airline Disaster's acting is epically bad. If some of these actors ever did more than a background part in a fifth grade Christmas play, it would be a surprise. Meredith Baxter phones in her performance and squeezes in a misplaced and forced F-bomb at one point. The sets are few and shoddily constructed. The passenger cabin of the supposedly radically-advanced aircraft looks like any other of the run-down seating areas on a cheap domestic flight. The door to the cockpit is held in place by $1.50 hinges from Ace Hardware and is probably less secure than a bedroom closet door. For whatever reason, the Ford logo on the front of a van needs to be blacked out, but the same logo is clearly visible on the steering wheel. The plane's cargo hold is a joke, and the President's ready room, or whatever it is, was designed with as little thought and budget as possible. The movie is choppy and segments sometimes don't even play out to completion. The special effects are of the cheapest variety; they shimmer, they're flat, they're goofy, and they look out of place. To be sure and to their credit, the filmmakers didn't have a Michael Bay-sized budget, but when the effects look this bad, well, it might be better to just pass on making the movie altogether than to have it come out like this.

Airline Disaster Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Airline Disaster's 1080p, 1.78:1-framed image comes as expected of a cheaply-made HD video film from The Asylum. The image appears consistently flat and devoid of texture and life. It's smooth but yields quality details in close-up shots. Skin textures are strong, ditto clothes, and viewers will note the general cheapness of the sets, not to mention the way the boosted resolution amplifies the shoddiness of the visual effects. Colors are vibrant and stable. They never quite capture a realistic balance, but bright reds and other brilliant shades appear accurate and consistent. Much of the movie takes place in a good bit of darkness. The President's "ready room," the cockpit, the cabin, and the plane's storage areas offer low lights and little bright color. As viewers might expect, heavy banding and some blocky backgrounds represent the usual array of low-quality HD video eyesores. On the surface and at-a-glance, the transfer looks fine. It's an acceptable watch, and the end result is no surprise considering all the facts.

Airline Disaster Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Airline Disaster's DTS-HD MA 2.0 lossless soundtrack might rightly be described with one word: loud. Indeed, this one's quite the aggressive little sucker at reference volume, but not necessarily to the benefit of the presentation. If anything, the volume seems an effort to hide a shoddy presentation. The track often feels boomy, detached, and absent precision clarity and sound placement. Spacing is poor, with the track never naturally spreading out, confined primarily to the middle. Sound effects are chunky and harsh, whether a high speed car chase through water, the opening and closing of doors on the airplane, or general man-on-man action. The roar of the jet engine, explosions, and heavier effects don't sound bad, but again volume seems to be the substitute for realism. Dialogue is suitably accurate and smooth, but the acting is such that audiences might actually have preferred a more garbled track. This is an adequate presentation, just as expected of a budget movie on Blu-ray.

Airline Disaster Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Airline Disaster contains no supplements.

Airline Disaster Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Watching a movie like Airline Disaster is a real chore, at least when watching it for the purpose of a review. However, this might very well be a good party movie. It's so clumsy and stupid that audiences might actually have a good time with it in a group setting, pointing out all the flaws and guaranteeing no dull moment. Beware watching it as one might a "normal" movie, however. It might very well drive one to dislike movies. Echo Bridge's Blu-ray release of Airline Disaster features acceptable video and audio. No extras are included. Considering the price, movie fans may as well buy it for bad movie night.