It’s time for the last of the Airport movies! Honestly it’s really not bad but I can see why it’s considered to be the weakest one. Not only did the film allow its name to be changed to Airport ’80 when it was aired abroad but I don’t think it takes itself as seriously as the first three. Not to say that it’s a full comedy or anything but there are scenes that don’t benefit the plot in any way like the affair with the reporter and it actually gets a little repetitive with the plane being attacked. Some good ideas here but the execution was not on point.

The film starts off with a huge conspiracy as a group of villains led by Kevin want to destroy an airplane. No it’s not because he got left at home all alone but for monetary reasons. Reporter Maggie finds out a scoop about his shady dealings…well find is a strong word. A guy literally ran into her house to let her know before he was shot dead. Kevin sweet talks her out of saying anything so he can give her his side of the story. Once she goes on the plane he decides to blow it up. What he didn’t count on was Patroni being the pilot this time. This airplane is supersonic and Patroni has supersonic piloting skills so when you put the two of them together like that good things are sure to follow. Kevin knows that if Maggie lands safely it is all over, can his missiles really bring down the plane??

Okay so first lets go with the positives here. I would say the film is about even with positives and negatives though so the sections are similar. I do like how we get two climaxes of sorts. Now granted, the second one feels a bit repetitive so I would have liked them to shake it up a little bit. I appreciate them trying to get a lot of action in there but you could change it up a bit. Also having a plane dodge missiles was a good way to show how this was a supersonic plane and not nearly as slow or weak as the usual ones. We got to see exactly what Patroni could do in combat and it was very impressive.

In general Patroni is a big positive here. You may be wondering a bit how he became such a hotshot pilot to the point where he is pulling all of this off. I guess his days of being a mechanic and then the back-end CEO are over. Now he’s a fighter pilot but that helps add to the fun of it all so I’m cool with it. He’s easily the best character in the movie and you want to give your star as much screentime as possible. Trust me that is always the best advice you could give a film.

On the flip side, we do have a very pointless romance here. There’s an athlete trying to win at the Olympics and so a reporter has a quick affair with her. The whole scene in the hot springs is definitely absurd. Cmon now she’s trying to get ready for an event coming up and apparently hasn’t seen this reporter in a while. They’re going to get that “friendly” that quickly? Noooo the scene was completely pointless and even by the end there’s just not much here. I guess it was just to give the passengers more to do but I would have cut that part out.

In general this also might be the weakest group of passengers that we’ve gotten. None of them are particularly likable or that memorable. You have the guy with his kid trying to have fun on the plane but they have no character. There’s the old lady always running to the bathroom and then you’ve got the rest of the crew basically just hanging out. At least in the film with the saboteurs we had traitors on board and a fairly intense pilot. There was a lot more happening there. This plane may be filled to the limit but it sure felt empty at times.

Now the conspiracy plot was fun but there are a lot of plot holes here. The obvious one of course is that this guy is rich enough with a ton of resources to have hired gunmen try to murder the reporter initially but then…he does nothing? Sure sending the rockets at the plane is all good but he should have just sent another gunman to her home or had someone snipe her on the way to the airport. He was way too complacent the whole time which really held him back. Also when she landed of course he should have had a backup plan to take her out instead of waiting to get the plane again.

She made it clear several times that she was going to destroy him and the company with the truth of his evil deeds so he had all day to do something about it. Now I don’t want to undersell his efforts. Of course he did plant bombs and use missiles of course which reasonably should have worked rather well but ultimately he just didn’t do a whole lot considering the high stakes of what it would meant if he let her loose. I also think Maggie was super lucky the whole time because technically she handled this poorly.

She committed all of the “don’ts” of being a reporter. She let the villain know that she was the only one who knew the truth and even gave him an exact timetable of when she would tell the world. Right up to the end with the TV crew she keeps mentioning that she’s going to break a story but not what the story actually was. So that still gave him even more time to finish her off. When you know a dark truth about someone who is a confirmed mass murderer then you need to keep things close to the vest. Seriously that’s an absolute necessity in this kind of thing.

So I would say there are some issues with that plot but the thing is, it’s still the best plot in the film. I wish they would have doubled down on that a bit. Imagine a whole chase scene in the airport like Mission Impossible? That would have been great and what would have made it double effective is how it would have the title actually be representative of the film for once. The action would actually be happening at the airport. I know that may sound crazy since you’re used to these films not having much to do with it but that’s why it would work.

Overall, Airport 4 is okay at best. It squanders the most interesting plot involving the conspiracy and I would argue it doesn’t make a lot of sense in general. I liked the attempts to make things more explosive and there was some promise with Patroni but ultimately this film just couldn’t execute at the level that it needed to. I would suggest watching the earlier films instead of this one. You should be reasonably entertained while watching this one but there just really isn’t much of a reason to do so. In a lot of ways the film is mainly going through the motions as opposed to doing something all that unique and so it doesn’t stand out.

Overall 5/10