Masterful Movie

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

I get Showtime for free with my cable package...and now I know why. They offer junk such as this to chose from. When I saw there was a Baldwin brother in the cast and Penelope Miller as well, I thought maybe it might be semi-decent. Well..I was so wrong about that. As I watch this..it gets worse and worse. The acting skills of most of the cast is weak and the plot line beyond ridiculous. Apparently, this is a government caused disaster..a planned one...and the unknowing passengers are basically guinea pigs for the entire thing. I can clearly see why Daniel Baldwin has never been more than a B-movie actor..he does not have much depth to his character at all. I am sure Ms. Miller wishes she had avoided accepting her role in this mess too. The set looks so fake,the blood looks fake...the expressions on the faces of the actors look fake..well..you get the idea. As I am watching this..the wise guys have just opened a hatch...and chaos has briefly ensued..but they found the stuff to save the people who have gotten sick from whatever virus was being carried on the plane. The decision to draw straws is made to decide who gets the meds to save them against the virus...cos..well..there isn't enough for everyone...of course..possibly thanks to government planning? One of the characters is a very rude guy who speaks up loudly every few minutes..and he tries to bargain with passengers by offering money to them to buy a dose of the antidote..but...OK...they are in the sky..on a doomed plane..where is he going to get the big bucks to give anyone? And the guy who is "just a coroner"...seems very knowledgeable about everything...wow..he is kind like a genius perhaps? Is he going to solve this mysterious problem and save everyone? Or is the plane going to crash into the ocean anyway like the government wants it to? ...which might be a good way to end it all and stop the horrible lines these poor saps have to keep speaking in every scene. The plot gets worse and worse. If you see this film in a video store..walk on past..unless you enjoy bad acting and flimsy plot lines...even seeing in for free seems to expensive to me.

So bad, I spent most of the movie sifting through IMDb and noticed some vaguely interesting things:1. The production company Trinity Pictures has six other movies listed on IMDb. They have a combined user rating of 4.4, Trinity should probably look into making wedding videos... 2. Three people in the cast were also in the film Full Disclosure. In fact there are quite a few joint ventures as you go thru, probably owing to the inbred nature of Canadian films... 3. There are six recognizable character actors (including The Smoking Man) in the movie. In spite of name recognition Baldwin and Miller are billed below the ubiquitous but mostly unknown Kim Coates (who played the jerk archetype in this movie and wasn't integral to the story such as it was). 4. Chris Makepeace is not listed in additional crew but had a credit as Second Assistant Director. He is of course the geek who needed the protection of Adam Baldwin in My Bodyguard who while sharing a surname with Dan Baldwin is no relation.5. It really is a shame that a once promising actress like Penelope Ann Miller has to take tripe like this now-a-days. Long ways from co-starring with the likes of Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Sean Penn, Matthew Broderick, Marlon Brando and even Govenator Arnie not to mention Dan's more successful but equally fatuous brother Alec... She seemed to have been given the script on the way to the set as she continually stumbled over lines, but then her lines would be difficult to say aloud in any circumstance where other people might hear you. 6. I counted plot elements lifted from no fewer than eight well known movies, including some of the main characters (An out of element Dr. who rises to the occasion; Barely trained pilot who heroically manages; An overzealous mil group guy who wants the infectious virus at the expense of the infected; A paranoid cowardly jerk who continually and improbably screws everything up, too bad Helen Hayes wasn't around to slap him; A thief who inadvertently contracts and spreads virus etc etc etc).

SPOILERS.Back in the mid-1950s there was "The High and the Mighty." It was a success, so there followed a spate of other airplane disaster movies (eg., "The Crowded Sky."). But you can only have so many engine failures and so many mid-air collisions, I guess, so some other crisis must take place before or after -- or, in this case, while -- the passengers reveal their own mid-air crises to one another. "Zero Hour!" in, what, 1957?, gave us all a dose of food poisoning that killed off all the competent pilots. "Airplane" (1980) sent it up. Then, for some reason, probably the ebola scare, in the 1990s there were several versions of "Outbreaks" and "Carriers."This cheaply made and thoughtless film is the first that I know of to combine some kind of viral outbreak with the traditional mid-air disaster. It's not really worth going into in any detail. The stereotypical characters and conflicts are promptly laid out for us. I more or less gave up after the first hour or so. I guess that's why I couldn't understand how everyone was able to leap to the conclusion that the pathogen was a virus and not, say, a bacterium, or how or why they assumed it was airborne and not in the water or something. Or how it's possible that "red and white blood cells are essentially becoming radioactive isotopes." Not that any of that matters to the viewers who will enjoy this, or to the witless writers either for that matter. The film achieves monuments of implausibility.The mechanism of infection and death isn't any more than a peg to hang a half-baked mystery on, and an excuse for Baldwin to chew out the wanly pretty blonde, Penelope Ann Miller, for which may his soul roast in hell. What is Baldwin doing in this movie anyway? What is he doing in ANY movie? I can grasp Penelope Ann Miller's presence. She's an actress of sorts, and eye candy to boot.There is a guy aboard the plane who is some sort of naval liason with the types who develop biochemical warfare agents. The only reason I can make that statement is that the character announces it out loud. I could never tell from his uniform because wardrobe has been able to supply him with only a generic gabardine and a brass "U.S." badge on each lapel. He has no sign of rank, nor does his uniform give any indication of which branch of the armed forces he's a member of.There's another character aboard the plane who is the stereotyped moron that every catastrophe movie needs. He's as much of the part of the plot as the Chief of Police in the cop/action movie who demands that the rogue cop turn in his badge and his gun for overzealousness or cantankerousness or excessive mopery in office. You can't miss this dilatory jerk. He's only there to shout abuse at everyone, accuse them of incompetence, display his cowardice, and infterfere with everyone's attempt to find a solution to the problem. He drips with sarcasm. He's the guy with the blue shirt and big jaw with a tiny mouth in the middle of it. I'd also mention that he speaks with a Canadian accent but it's hardly worth it since, with the exceptions of maybe Baldwin and Miller, everybody in the movie speaks with a Canadian accent. Not that that's necessarily bad. Canadians are bland and inoffensive. Some of my best friends are Canadians. In fact some of my relatives live in Athabasca, Alberta. They don't own any gold mines or anything, but they do have gallon jars of pickled moose on the pantry shelves. I only hope the Canadians never stop enforcing their anti-litter laws, and I love Moose Head Ale. I've never met a Canadian I didn't like. I've met a few movies I didn't care much for, and this is one of them.

I got into this movie on the movie channel maybe 15 minutes after it had started. My wife and I laughed here and there, until we realized the film was not meant as a comedy. So we laughed even more while we watched the rest of the movie, even though the leaden pace got us to reach for the remote again and again. Everything about this movie feels amateurish: from the cliché ridden script to the totally inept, one expression only performance of Daniel Baldwin (who was somehow better in Vampires, for instance). Do I have to mention the total lack of suspense? When you are obviously on a very low budget, they should experiment and strive for some originality, for God's sake, instead of trying to imitate mainstream, run of the mill Hollywood fare.