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Plane Review

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This review is of a TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

It’s time for a thriller and I remember seeing this trailer several times when the film was coming out. Sometimes you just like to see a fairly basic action title and this one definitely fits the bill on that level. There is quite a bit of action here and the characters have to surpass some real difficult odds. The film is fun the whole way through and the weakest aspect is really just that there aren’t any really great members of the crew outside of the main cast.

The film starts with Brodie getting ready for a fairly routine flight. He’s a solid pilot and has seen his share of action over the years. He’s flown through all kinds of weather so when the company forces him to chart a path right through a storm, he isn’t overly worried. He is less than pleased at also being surprised to find out that he will be transporting a criminal as well but doesn’t really get an option about that. Well, naturally the storm does impact the plane and they are forced to have an emergency landing in the middle of enemy territory. They are now being attacked by legions of powerful tribesmen. Can Brodie and Louis (The convict) team up to save everybody or will they ultimately fall to this attack?

I would say the film does a pretty good job at building some tension early during the flight although it was pushing it a bit to have Brodie leave the controls to check on everyone during a massive storm. I’m thinking it was to get him banged up and show how serious this was but there had to be a better way to do that. Still, once they land the film moves pretty fast. Brodie and Louis exploring the island is pretty fun and Brodie even gets to use his expert skills to get the phone working.

The first fight is definitely on the weaker side though. It was really just a long grapple and I was expecting a lot more hand to hand there. I’m thinking that’s because this was made to be a really down to Earth film so this is supposed to be what fighting is really like but I’ll take a cinematic battle any day. The gun fights we get later on are definitely a lot more solid and I would argue that’s usually rare. Typically I would expect the hand to hand battles to really be the highlight in a film like this.

Ah well, I suppose the film couldn’t do it all. On the gun fighting, I was glad they showed just how useful a good sniper can be. He took out most of the enemies on his own. If anything, I think they could have potentially won that fight outright since he just needed a few more shots. By the very end we do get into some Storm Trooper status as everyone keeps on missing but the film made clear the difference between a master operative who does this for a living and the random terrorists.

I also really enjoyed the subplot with corporate talking tough from home base. You had the sleazy CEO type guy who refuses to help no matter what since he is worried about his reputation. He would absolutely just let everybody back to die if it would help his image. Then you have the consultant who is good at situations like this. He comes in insulting everybody and gets right to business. This guy is definitely the standout character of the film because without him calling in backup and getting things ready, the heroes would have been absolutely cooked.

I’d even say it’s almost like a twist because for a while there you are basically expecting Brodie to do everything himself. Instead in this case he actually has a whole lot of backup who come in clutch to help out. It makes this into a bit of a team up film which initially you thought it would just be with the main two. They still do a good chunk of the work but they get a good amount of help against the waves of enemies. In the end it also helps with the whole realism angle.

So Brodie works well as the main character. He’s a tough fighter and never gives up as he fights on. I do think he had a pretty bad plan at the end though when he’s ready to give himself up. I get the noble sacrifice play and all but giving yourself up is never the right move. All it does it open yourself up to a whole lot of trouble. There’s rarely if ever any real benefit to doing this and you have better odds trying to fight your way out. Yeah your odds are lousy there too, but at least they aren’t 0.

Then Louis also does well with his combat experience. The guy has been around for a long time and he takes out some of the enemies right away. I was surprised if anything how shocked and hesitant Brodie was. In this situation you have to take the out as quickly as possible since jail is not an option and using lethal measures is a must. Without Louis, Brodie was definitely not going to last long here. At the end of the day Louis definitely proved himself when it counted.

As for the rest of the crew, they’re just generally awful. They panic and yell the whole time and then when they’re obviously in strange territory they still run up to the cars approaching. It’s not like it would have changed things much if they had stayed back but everyone knows not to run up to those. Then later on when it’s time to escape, they grumble about the method. None of them seemed to have any common sense or even a sense of urgency about them. It’s always rough to see the NPC type characters acting like this because you just expect better. I’ll give some kudos to Brodie’s co-pilot and one of the stewardesses but aside from them the others were just making too many bad decisions.

As you can expect given the circumstances, there is definitely a bit of a body count here. The characters are getting bumped off left and right and the film can definitely get rather violent. It’s definitely a case where I think it could have been more extreme but it’s enough to probably caution you about either way. Know that you’re getting into an intense film with this one but you could probably guess that. The film has solid writing and pacing throughout so it all goes pretty quickly. The film never lingers on any one moment for too long.

Overall, Plane is a fun film. It can definitely get rather intense and the villains are always annoying to see but you’ll enjoy it more than you don’t. While the passengers panicking and generally getting in the way may be realistic, it doesn’t make their scenes any less annoying. You absolutely do not want to get stuck with them on your side. They won’t be able to back you up at all or come in handy and will only put you in more danger. If you’re in a plane crash, you’re definitely going to want to put some distance between you and the others as soon as possible.

Overall 6/10

Stealth Review

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stealth
Time to review a film that’s a lot more fun. It still has its flaws to be sure, but Stealth excels in two areas to an extent that is almost unprecedented in live action world. That’s not bad eh? The poster looks pretty intense and it makes you wonder why more people didn’t see the film. It certainly could have used the extra cash so that it wouldn’t flop in the box office.

Ben, Kara, and Henry are the main characters. They’re the three best pilots that we’ve got and these guys don’t mess around! One day, their commander announces that they will be getting a new partner. The twist is that the partner isn’t actually alive and it’s just a sentient A.I. That was certainly pretty scary for the heroes and can they really get along with this thing. Even more important…can they trust it!?

First off, I have to say that the three main characters were not great. Henry seems to be sexist and you have to love how he quickly mentions the race card as one of his first lines. It’s very intriguing. Either way, any chance that he had of being a good character is quickly wiped out when he realize that he’s just interested in having affairs with as many people as possible. That’s a sure way to be an unlikable character. Ben isn’t much better. He’s also a womanizer who eventually starts to develop feelings for the heroine. It’s really unbelievable and it’ll just make you wince. It’s sad because he has some cool moments like when he almost attacks the drone and the ending, but it’s hard to ignore the traits that he had earlier. It was simply too late for him. It’s hard to see what Kara sees in Ben and she does realize that he’s a womanizer. There’s almost no way she can trust him emotionally. It’s better to just stay as comrades and not take the extra step sometimes.

Let’s quickly talk about some of the positives. The action scenes are some of the best in cinema. These are Matrix/Man of Steel type of action scenes. Everything moves by very quickly and I can honestly say that modern action films can still learn a thing or two here. Imagine how epic it would look if Iron Man vs Ultron looked like these scenes in Age of Ultron. The Jets are breaking the soundbarrier left and right and the scenes really get your blood pumping. I still think Man of Steel wins as far as action scenes go, but in terms of pure speed it’s actually close. That’s extremely impressive for Stealth and I could not get enough of the cool plane scenes. If the new Top Gun film coming out looks this impressive I’ll have gained a lot of respect for the plane fighting genre. Still, all movies need to take a look at this and apply it when necessary. At the very least, films like The Flash, Shazam, Ms. Marvel, and Superman should always look like this. Superman already pulled it off so now it’s time for the others to do so as well.

That was one big positive and now it’s time to look at the other one. This film has a dynamite 5 star soundtrack. It’s almost perfect and it’s easily a contender for best soundtrack of all time. The impressive part is that this film was able to reach those heights with lyrical songs. If you know me, you know that I tend to prefer instrumental because lyrical songs tend to be edgy at times or the lyrics are simply not engaging. Here, they only picked snippets from various songs so I can’t actually recommend the whole song, but the parts that were used (Minus the rap song) were very good. Ben actually gets a nifty action song when he appears in the jet and likewise for various fight scenes. As a nice change of pace, we also got a cool techno/stealth theme, which worked very well for the mysterious moments.

It’s certainly not every day that you get a film where the special effects are through the roof and accompanied with a great soundtrack. Man of Steel accomplished that, but the film is certainly legendary. The film also took the high road when it came to the animal violence issue. The dog ran away instead of getting shot and I can imagine that everyone in the theater stood up and cheered when this happened. It was simply an intense scene that was extremely epic and awesome.

All right, it’s time to look at the negatives. The romance is one of them for sure. We get some pretty sad scenes involving Ben and Henry as they flirt with various women. There’s no depth here and it’s all about physical attraction. The actual romance between Ben and Kara also isn’t handled well and I don’t see why it was included in the film. It was really only there to fill the quota that every film should have romance in it. That’s what Hollywood seems to believe at any rate and that’s pretty sad.

Stealth has a pretty boring moment where the heroes decide to head to an island for some R n R. They need the vacation at this point right? It’s really just an excuse for more romance and fanservice so it’s pretty sad. We really didn’t need a breather like that one. Some parts of the film also felt rather random like when some enemies took over a lab belonging to Mr. Orbit. Where did these guys come from and what do they want? It’s a good thing that Ben had his drone at the ready.

Speaking of which, the drone made for a great bad guy. He had an epic design and his strategic planning was intense. As a villain, he really knew what to do and how to keep things impersonal. He does have emotions unlike most A.I. which is also impressive. The whole film is basically on auto pilot so everything moves by very quickly. This is a good thing as the film gets to be more ambitious than usual. Typically, the A.I. will turn evil and the heroes will destroy it. What if, the A.I. turns evil, but then sees the error of its ways? It’s something that’s never really been done before and it’s nice to see this film take that approach. It may seem rather hollow since the A.I. destroyed around 1000 people with nuclear fallout though. I thought that part went by a little too smoothly. The people in that area certainly weren’t expecting to be dead so quickly. The drone ultimately tried to make up for this though and I think he really could have become a great hero for future films if he had stuck around.

I was also expecting Ben to try and avenge one of his comrades. (Who died in a pretty bad way. They told him to slam on the brakes, but he wouldn’t listen…at all. It was clear what the drone was trying to do and he simply didn’t listen) When he fired the missile, I thought it was game over, but Ben is just a forgiving kind of guy I suppose. He was against the drone idea from the start, but he seemed to warm up to the drone by the end. You could almost say that they became friends at that point. The drone does sound a little like Hal 9000, which is pretty cool. He also had character from the start and he adopted the name of “Tin Man” since the heroes kept calling him that.

The acting in this film could be rather bad at times like when the hero yelled at the drone not to make him repeat himself, but acting is an extremely low priority on what I’m looking for in a film so this isn’t too bad. If it’s something distracting or seriously messed up, then it’ll start to hurt the bottom line. One scene that was unintentionally funny was when the general called his politician. He made a crazy speech about what separates warriors from politicians and then he pulled the trigger. You can guess what he was essentially saying, but the scene just felt off. The general was probably insane by the end and he’s a villain to be sure, but it was still an odd end. The politician also got the shaft here as he barely got to appear.

One plot that was not quite as fun as the others was when Kara landed in North Korea. Naturally, there are still a lot of tensions between our two countries and it’s always satisfying to see the U.S. come out on top, but it was rather unnecessary. That bit of the plot really came out of nowhere. I have fun looking into how people predict World War III would play out and an unfortunately large group of people do believe that we would lose, but I’d invite them to watch this film. Perhaps this is how it would go. There’s practically a mini army after Kara and they still have a tough time trying to stop her. Imagine what a whole squad of U.S. troops could do. It’s sad that the government left her for lost there, but at least Ben manned up and went in to save the day.

This may not be a horror film, but there is a twist ending. I won’t say what it is, but let’s just say that it’s pretty intense and perfectly leads into a sequel. Unfortunately, we’ll likely never get a sequel. Ah well, at least the film got to go off with a bang. If it ever did get a sequel, I’d like to see the drone and Ben team up against aliens. That would make for a solid story and it would certainly be engaging for new viewers.

Overall, Stealth was a fun film. I definitely wish that the fanservice was gone and the romance wasn’t handled very well. Taking away those two features would have greatly helped the film. After all, the special effects were out of this world and the soundtrack was dynamite. That’s a winning combo for most films, but it’s one that is very hard to actually achieve. The pacing is also really good aside from the brief rest stop at Thailand. Everything just goes by really quickly, which allows the film to go through many plots and a lot of different action segments. We never got the fight between Ben and the drone that we wanted, but we came close in several scenes. The ring of fire that the drone made was cool and it was also neat to see him figure out how to attain fuel the hard way. I definitely recommend this film. You should be wary of the fanservice since it can be rather overwhelming, but once you get past that you are in for an action treat. I don’t think we’ll see any airplane film have better fights than this one for quite a while.

Overall 6/10