Sadly Over-hyped

recommended

Fantastic!

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

When I purchased Mill Creek's 50-movie sci-fi "invasion" box set, there were two movies in the entire bunch for which I was excited. The first was ABRAXAS, GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE and it delivered. The second was a film I was unfamiliar with, SLIPSTREAM, but it featured an all-star cast including Bill Paxton, Mark Hamill, Ben Kingsley, F. Murray Abraham, Bob Peck (better known to just about everyone as Muldoon from JURASSIC PARK), and Robbie Coltrane. The premise sounded fantastic: a near-distant future where the Earth has been ravaged by some sort of disaster and the survivors make their living on a raging system of wind dubbed the "Slipstream". For whatever reason, I imagined outposts and landing platforms mounted far above the ruined Earth with hotshot pilots jetting from one dicey location to another in wicked jet fighters or something. Then I watched it and saw my hopes shatter within minutes of the opening credits. Instead of landing platforms and outposts far above the Earth's surface, we get a system of caves. Instead of wicked jet fighters, we get wimpy little glider planes. And for the record, the slipstream itself is unimpressive and plays little part in the movie other than to explain why all the main characters get around via little planes. Bill Paxton is our main character, Matt Owens. Matt owns his own little glider plane and makes his living doing whatever odd jobs he can find. He crosses paths with two psychotic law enforcement officers (Mark Hamill and Kitty Aldridge) who are bringing a prisoner (Bob Peck) in to face punishment for murder. Matt steals the prisoner and sets off in hopes of turning him in for a hefty reward, but he quickly learns there's more to this polite murderer in a business suit than it seems.It becomes blatantly obvious at a point that this movie was made because someone on the filmmaking team found these homes built into the rock faces of Cappadoccia, Turkey and thought, "Hey, that would be a cool location for a movie. What else have we got?" Then someone else was like, "Tiny planes?" And thus SLIPSTREAM was born. Or maybe screenwriter Tony Kayden turned in a draft for the script that was way cooler and might've been closer to my expectations if executed properly, but instead the producers shot him down. Nope, rocks and planes. I probably would've even been all right with rocks and planes if the story wasn't so simple, boring, and stupid. The longer I watched this movie, the sadder it made me. Yeah, it was miserably upsetting seeing that the movie was the polar opposite of what I had expected on a visual level but, the further I got into the movie, the more it made me cringe in pain. Bob Peck's character, dubbed Byron by Paxton's character, is too whimsical to ever come across as threatening. I was hoping for action and adventure but instead we're treated to Byron musing about what it must be like to sleep and dream. The murder he's accused (and admitted) to committing might have been explained at some point but I missed it. I got the impression it involved mutual consent but I'm not going to watch this again to find out. Byron's got magic healing powers that he uses once or twice that are never explained and I'm not even sure they were addressed again. He's a main character in this movie and he's nothing more than a goofy enigma I've got no interest in solving. He gets a dance number too. That's right, a smegging dance number.With the innocent aloofness of Byron's character alone, I felt SLIPSTREAM starting to dip into children's movie territory. But is it a children's movie? It's rated PG-13 so I guess it's a possibility. The writing is too simple and cheesy to really appeal to mature minds. Most characters in SLIPSTREAM are just archetypes without any sort of real personality to give them dimension. Bill Paxton's Matt is a hot shot whose over- confidence exceeds his actual skills and his eventual priority shift is telegraphed from the moment he and Byron meet. Mark Hamill is absolutely wasted as the main villain Tasker. He apparently received no instruction other than to sneer and make snide remarks, and we learn nothing about whatever agency he claims to work with other than the fact that their totally cool with killing innocents to achieve their goal of… arresting a murderer? Kitty Aldridge is Tasker's partner Belitski and she exists only to give Matt someone to drool over between escapes. Robbie Coltrane and F. Murray Abraham amount to nothing more than cameos and, after having watched this movie twice, I still haven't spotted Ben Kingsley in there. I assume it's because I can't help but mentally check out about halfway through. I'm sorry but SLIPSTREAM just fails on pretty much all levels. The science fiction premise is wasted. The acting is corny and the writing is simplistic and predictable. The cast is given nothing of substance to work with and I don't care how much aerial plane footage they bother to shove in because it never looks cool. Well, all right, I'll admit Tasker's plane was sort of cool. So there you go folks. You can skip SLIPSTREAM unless you really want to see evil Luke Skywalker hunt a sedated Muldoon across Turkey in a semi-cool-looking glider plane.

In the future our planet has been devastated by pollution. Scruffy down on his luck bounty hunter Matt Owens (a typically lively performance by Bill Paxton) kidnaps fugitive android Byron (a fine and likable performance by Bob Peck) from two police officers, who naturally give chase. While the offbeat and interesting setting has promise, alas Steven Lisberger's bland direction, Tony Kayden's wildly uneven script, the sluggish pace, the meandering narrative, the dodgy (not so) special effects, and far too much tedious and pretentious dialogue doom this one to the level of strictly diverting mediocrity. Moreover, this picture crucially lacks the snap and tension it requires to really catch fire; instead it just kind of putters around without ever picking up any steam throughout. Fortunately, the cast do their best to rise well above the lackluster material: Mark Hamill snarls it up nicely as the hard-bitten Will Tasker, Kitty Aldridge provides some much needed (and appreciated) spark as Tasker's feisty partner Belitski, and Eleanor David makes a strong and appealing impression as the sweet and radiant Ariel. The eventual friendship between Byron and Owens and Byron's romancing of Ariel deliver several pleasingly warm and charming moments. Robbie Coltrane, Ben Kingsley, and F. Murray Abraham are given precious little to do in minor parts. Frank Tidy's sumptuous cinematography boasts lots of striking aerial shots and makes the most out of the desolate rocky terrain. Elmer Bernstein's robust and rousing full-bore orchestral score hits the stirring spot. An okay time-waster.

1989—six years after the third and final chapter in the Star Wars trilogy: Harrison Ford is a Hollywood megastar, Carrie Fisher is a best-selling novelist, and even Warwick Davis is enjoying the high life, having been leading man in Ron Howard's fantasy flick Willow. Mark Hamill, on the other hand, is struggling to find anything other than minor TV roles and voice-over work since hanging up his light sabre. Could a major role in Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz's post apocalyptic sci-fi Slipstream be just the thing to revive his flagging career?Does a wookie like losing? Does C3PO enjoy space travel? Is George Lucas any good at writing dialogue?Despite Hamill's best efforts, the actor putting in a respectable performance as a ruthless bounty-hunter out to apprehend an android suspected of murder, Slipstream is a monumental stinker of a movie, one that attempts to be both popcorn entertainment and cerebral sci-fi, but which fails in both departments. Horribly flawed, charmless, and disjointed, this misjudged mess boasts soporific direction, dreadful characterisation, a rousing score that is completely incongruous to all that it accompanies, and (Hamill apart) terrible acting, with Bill Paxton giving one of the most irritating performances I have ever seen (God only knows how his career continued to thrive after this fiasco).

Umm, this movie is way under-rated. I put it far ahead of most of the crap I have watched in the past ten years. Ben Kingsley, Mark Hamill, Bill Paxton I think his name is were all great. Plus, how about a unique post-apocalyptic scenario? We've already had nuclear war and a desert wasteland, also the world entirely flooded by water after the polar ice caps melt. This one has a crazy rejoining of the continents and several nasty wind-currents that blow around the planet's surface. I'd say that's original. There are several other well-known actors in this film, including a bunch of dudes in a hot-tub, although I can't exactly name them.