When Everything Is Super.. Except The Hero of It !
This is one of the memorable flicks of the 1990s. Of course not in the
same shelf that has (Con Air), (The Rock), (Face Off), but you may find it at the lower one, and when you check it out you'll be surprised. The Action is super but not that totally crazy as some likes from the same era. True that the ultimate tagline of all of this kind of movies is "don't you ever think" but here even if you did, you'd see how it got a little bit of inner logic. You've got to love and respect that script, it did it well. The climax's sequence was so tough a' la James Bond grand style. Thanks to director (Deran Sarafian) who presented also (Gunmen - 1994) another good Action. The only problem, a big one too, is (Charlie Sheen) ! Actually with a movie like that you'd think young (Clint Eastwood), or (Willis), or even (Sly), but not Mr. shining black hair who can't act well. His charisma is weaker than the role. He's funny for sometimes but silly frigid for most of the time. Still good noise though, and definitely the most amusing among the series of the unfortunate events that (Sheen) did it during the 1990s (The Arrival, Postmortem, Free Money, No Code of Conduct, ..etc) before his merciful retirement from cinema (temporarily or eternally I think the cinema retired from him !) to establish a TV career with (2 Men & Half) which's another flop if you asked me. So (Terminal Velocity) compared to (Sheen)'s original disasters is like paradise, but he still in it. I said once that the main defect, sometimes the only defect, with movies by (Tom Cruise), (Ben Affleck) or (Charlie Sheen) is that they're their leads !. 
Big, dumb fun
When Ditch Brodie takes a novice skydiver (Chris Morrow) up in his plane for
lessons, she tragically falls to her death. Brodie loses his license and tries to live with the loss. However an closer look at a video of the accident reveals a second plane where a body was thrown to impersonate Chris. Brodie investigates and uncovers a plot to capture sensitive information and return it to Russia. This is a really fun film. It's not meant to be a masterpiece or a deep political thriller. It is meant to be a fun ride through exaggerated characters and silly set pieces. The plot is almost pointless - it's just an excuse to hang the set pieces around. However what you do get is Sheen overacting, great action scenes - the best being Sheen skydiving after a car which has Kinsji locked in the trunk. You understand? - it's meant to be big dumb fun. Personally I think this is better than a lot of big summer films that have big special effects scenes and ridiculous plots but try to take themselves seriously. This knows it's all a bit unlikely but enjoys itself anyway. Sheen is the key to the tongue-in-cheek approach. He doesn't play a character - he almost just plays himself! Even when he's in action scenes he's smiling - because he's having fun! and it makes me enjoy it a lot more. Kinski almost has as much fun in her role, but she has to carry a lot of the plot so she is more serious at time. A pre-Sopranos James Gandolfini is menacing in his small bad guy role and Melvin Van Peebles makes an appearance to show that it's not just his son that can do daft films. Overall it's silly dumb fun. Sheen enjoys himself so why can't you?. |
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