These made-for-TV docudrama disaster movies seem to have conformed to a pattern. Since the budget is limited and the shooting time constrained, they can't really have a carefully wrought plot line or expensive computer-generated effects. With rare exceptions they now reach a level of flaccid competence and are stuck there, kind of in comformity to the Peter Principle.
When the subject is an airplane in jeopardy, as this one is, the problem is compounded by the fact that airplane disasters tend to occur not in increments but all at once -- in a few seconds the engine quits, or the hydraulic system fails, or, as in this case, the top of the cabin blows away and not only causes chaos but sucks somebody out -- not pictured here.
If the cataclysm is over with so quickly, what do you do with the rest of the time? You can fill it in with the back stories of all the passengers and crew with some voice overs and flashbacks. That's what the holotype did -- "The High and the Mighty." But the current writers have pared that down to merely showing that all the crew members were cheerful and happy. No voice overs and only two brief and pointless flashbacks.
Instead, the catastrophe occurs rather early and the rest of the time is taken up with the terror and heroism in the cabin and flight deck. And a good deal of time is devoted to what happens AFTER the aircraft s safely stopped on the runway, an anti-climax if there ever was one.
On the plus side, some nice model work with the crippled airplane, decent performances, and Connie Sellecca, who is a genuine fox, in the right-hand seat.
The direction is pedestrian though. The camera lurches and jumps around, one of the flight attendants is too obviously a heroine, and the sight of passengers and crew coping with the horror goes on too long and becomes repetitious and confusing. The dialog doesn't scintillate but neither is it stupid. I frankly missed the usual conversation among the stewardesses about their sex lives. And the absence of the sick child who desperately needs a laparotomy almost brought me to tears.
All in all, remarkably routine.
0 out of 9 found this helpful