Turbulence (1997).

Directed by Robert Butler

Written by Jonathan Brett

Starring Lauren Holly, Ray Liotta, Brendan Gleeson, Healy from Orange is the New Black, and a very resilient 747.

1. (The Stage)

It’s Christmas Eve, and despite it being a huge travel day, there are only about 10 passengers on one of the world’s biggest planes heading from New York to Los Angeles. Unfortunately for the airline, it’s losing money on this trek. Oh, and 2 of those 10 passengers are convicts - one is a hardened Southern bank robber. The other is a serial killer named Ryan Weaver…but is he really a serial killer, or was it all manufactured by a detective who really wants to become famous? Spoiler alert: he’s a fucking serial killer.

2. (The Good)

Ray Liotta plays Ryan Weaver, and he’s about the only good thing in this forgettable Christmas yarn. He seriously looks like he’s having fun and he chews the scenery at every turn. I think his character choice was one of Hannibal Lecter, albeit more “rapey” and less subtle. He’s a very intelligent serial killer (we know this because he…reads books and enjoys “challenging conversations”). His M.O. is to emotionally connect with women, buy them a stuffed animal, and then kill them, I guess. Look, if it seems like I’m grasping at straws, I am - this is all the screenwriter gives us.

95% of the film takes place on the plane, but some of the exterior shots look nice and there’s a decent shot of Liotta and Lauren Holly as the lights flicker on and off in the cabin amongst the cacophony of Christmas lights, which looks pretty great.

3. (The Bad)

This screenplay is dumb. Like really fucking stupid. Every character here makes about the dumbest decision you can possibly make in every single situation. About 30 minutes into the movie, the plane is left without pilots because one walked into a bullet (“Hey, what’s going on down here?” he exclaims, as people are shooting at each other, calmly walking into the path of hot lead) and the other killed himself by smacking his head into the console when he decided to try and walk around while a hole that was blown into the side of the plane was jerking the vessel like a dog with a chew toy.

The protagonist, Terri, has multiple chances to kill Weaver, but doesn’t. It’s another ‘character in a horror movie runs upstairs instead of running out the front door’ film, but the character just keeps running until they’re 35,000 feet in the air. Don’t even get me started on the incompetent law enforcement. At the beginning of the film, they’re staking him out with multiple officers while he skips around town shopping for stuffed koala bears. My initial thought is, “Maybe they are letting him lead them to something.” Well, they lead him to his girlfriend’s house, and they just break the door down and arrest him. Why not just arrest him outside of the toy store? Idiocy. Every single one on the plane deserved what they got because of their lack of intelligence in dealing with Stubbs, a character played by Brendan Gleeson. The cop who broke the rules on the ground never sees comeuppance for his rule breaking ways.

There are like 8 other passengers on board that are still alive, but the screenwriter can’t find a thing to do with them so Ray Liotta just sort of stuffs them into a pantry until the plane lands and then they safely pop out like they’re part of a goddamn magic show. About an hour in, I thought to myself, “Wait…are those other passengers dead?” Nope. Just stowed away like the rest of the luggage.

4. (The Ugly)

Brendan Gleeson as Stubbs was comically bad. I can only imagine the director’s instructions to him were, “Just play Stubbs as whatever yokel you picture that comes from the furthest backwoods in Alabama.”

There’s also a scene in which Terri flies her plane through the top of a hotel in Las Vegas and then drives the landing gear through the top of a tall parking garage, plowing multiple cars off of the edge. Afterwards, she sighs, and the people in the control tower crack jokes, but they must have realized that both of those fuckups probably killed multiple people…right? Props to the pilot though, who gets the ‘landing for dummies’ lesson and saves the day.

One more bit of ugliness - this film was made for 55 million dollars and only grossed 11 million dollars at the box office, which is a massive flop. Any idea why? It’s a movie set during Christmas that they (for some stupid reason) released January 10th, about five weeks too late.

5. (The End)

This movie is a mess. It’s dumb, and outside of Ray Liotta, there’s not much to see here. Lauren Holly really tries as Terri, but she’s given nothing to work with. I found it much more enjoyable when I pictured Mary Swanson, her character from Dumb and Dumber, walking into the airport in the beginning of that film and then Turbulence actually being the second half of that flick.