Drewboy-2
I saw this film last night on TV at a hotel in Daejeon, South Korea. It really did make me think, okay, one part "Towering Inferno", one part "Poseidon Adventure". But now that I see this film was made in 1999, can't help but wonder if it might've been watched by Al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden and been an inspiration for them, especially the helicopter crash sequence. Also, it gets SO irritating to see that a movie is set in an American city that I've lived in (Seattle) but then absolutely nothing looks familiar and sure enough, it turns out to be filmed in Vancouver BC which stunt-doubles for so many places in America. Film in America, please! But all in all, a good suspense piece.
RN0815
A group of fired guards hijacks a helicopter to raid the Treasury building and to rob the printing plates for the new $100 bills. Although their plan seems to be pretty unrealistic (where do they plan to go, since they never tried to hide their identities or even their fingerprints, and how will they turn the plates into the 100 million dollars they expect?), it's okay for a cheap action movie. Introducing the robbers as normal people who plan a crime way to big for them, not as a gang of unscrupulous professionals, could have given the plot more opportunities. Especially the faked helicopter crash is pretty funny and lets the baddies appear real likable, and if the plan had worked, nobody would have been killed or seriously injured at all. And then they spoil it all in a couple of minutes: Tom becomes a ruthless villain without any understandable cause. Quentin, the boss, appears ice cold and later, the more went wrong, real menacing. The rest of the men remain faceless goons until they are eliminated one by one.On the opposite, we have Dean, also a fired guard, a former friend of Quentin. With his teenage son Jeremy he comes to the building to pick up his fiancée and her daughter. Jeremy don't like his future stepmother and stepsister, and I don't blame him. Of course all four, along with a handful of people from the typical disaster movie crowd, are present right in the moment of the robbery. After the first shoot-out they look at each other, "Oops, nobody was hurt, everything is fine, never mind looking for the shot guards lying all around, let's go!" Real nice people!Naturally, Dean, who is supposed to be the hero of this flick, leaves his family alone and follows the robbers to the roof. He shoots the pilot and causes the helicopter to crash into the middle of the building, setting it on fire. For undisclosed reasons there are some oil barrels on the roof, they are hit by bullets, and so a second fire starts. Of course Dean, his family, the disaster movie folk, and the robbers are caught between the two fires.Police and Fire Brigade can't do anything and at least they don't bother the viewers with doing anything. (Which is, in movies like this, usually something stupid.)So everything is clear, good guys here, bad guys there, and somehow the hero will dispatch the villains and save the courageous and the hysterical after the cowardly and the selfish have fallen into the fire (sorry, no little dog)... But not so fast! Now the only real interesting character comes into play: Female robber Michelle, loved by Quentin but hated by Tom, and locked in an elevator by the latter. By the way, she also happens to be Dean's ex-wife and Jeremy's mother - maybe they should have named the film "Family Inferno". Thankfully, after the good people rescued her, she is not turning into a typical backstabbing femme fatal, still going for the money. Even more thankfully, she is not turning into a heroine, regretful and trying to compensate. She just tries to get out alive - with her son, but not caring much for her ex-husband - and hopefully to weasel out scotfree. When she shoots Tom, it's just revenge and not for a moment she considers to sacrifice herself and to be the one who has to close the strongroom door from the outside.So, Dean has to do this, leaving his two wives and two children behind. Not surprisingly, he finds a way to survive. Surprisingly, he also saves Quentin from burning alive and hands him over to the law. So they can burn him on the chair instead. (Just kidding, Quentin is white!)So everything is fine, the surviving disaster movie people are thankful that they survived, had a great adventure, got their children finally to like each other, got the stepson's troublesome natural mother finally locked away, have a hero instead of a loser as father... okay, the not surviving may have asked what exactly caused the fire. The government is thankful too and offers the man who saved their precious printing plates his old job as head of the guards of the Treasury Building.(Wait a minute! What Treasury Building? They don't have it anymore, thanks to Dean's heroically effort.)
maralex
Although this is set in a skyscraper which is on fire, rather than a ship that's sinking beneath the water, lots of the stock characters seemed to have been filched from The Poseidon Adventure. Prochnow's villain has the strongest character definition, or seems to have, perhaps because he's acting better than the rest of the cast. Eric Roberts 'tries hard' as they might say in a school report, but it's a pretty thankless role, and his son and girlfriend are dreadful. The flames and a crashing plane scene are so bad they're hilarious. At one stage I expected Leslie Nielsen to appear saying 'And stop calling me Shirley'. There is a slight twist to the story, but not enough to redeem it. Really the best way to enjoy it is as a spoof, but as that's not what the director intended then it has to be written off as a pretty bad film. Good for Prochnow fans, okay for Eric Roberts fans, waste of time for anyone else. Incidentally, Prochnow's girlfriend was way too young for him; nice for him, but annoying to watch. Why not give men girlfriends within fifteen years of their age for a change?
