FORMAT: DVD
Air Marshal is a straight-to-DVD action flick from the Nu Image “American Heroes” line. It’s basically a slight variation on Passenger 57 for the Post-9/11 world. Dean Cochran stars as a former Special Forces soldier-turned-air marshal who’s on a flight home to see his pregnant wife. Of course, the plane is taken over by Arab terrorists. There’s a shootout on the plane, and the marshal is presumed dead. The dumb terrorists don’t realize he pulled the oldest trick in the book (wearing a bulletproof vest) and soon, he sets out to stop the terrorists, land the plane, and save the passengers.
Dean Cochran is a perfectly acceptable C-list square jaw, action hero type. He looks like the love child of Dean Cain and Paul Logan, which means he looks right at home in a second-rate Nu Image production. Considering the low budget surroundings, his performance is about on par with everything else in the movie, which is to say, slightly better than you’d expect. The only “star” in the movie is Jack Deth himself, Tim Thomerson, who plays a senator who is embarrassed by his daughter’s constant flirting with other passengers.
Nu Image was working with a formula here and they follow it to the letter. You can chart the history of airline action flicks like this one back to the disaster movies of the ‘70s (like Airport) all the way up to the actioners of the ‘90s (like Executive Decision). Air Marshal doesn’t stray from the formula. It checks off all the boxes and crosses off all the cliches in the book.
It also delivers some unintentional laughs along the way. The constant shots of the poorly CGI-ed plane are good for a chuckle and the emergency landing scene is pretty funny, which helps. Overall, it makes for an OK night of braindead DTV cinema.
AKA: Air Marshals.
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