Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal

This movie is a truckload of great ideas bogged down in a morass of hokey execution. Production values are ok, the film quality is _great_, but the dialogue is stilted and camera work mundane. There is also very little plot. It also seems to be a showcase of actors who's careers have been or could have been. Rutger Hauer, Gabrielle Anwar, Joe Mantegna, Craig Sheffer, the little baldish tv director who used to play hitmen (including on the episode "Bushido" of Miami Vice).

PROS:

Concept: a Marilyn Manson type gothic (-ish) rocker has organized a concert in the sky, complete with mock executions and The Hitcher is your co-pilot. (But wait, a gang of _real_ satanists want to hijack the plane and crash it into an unknown town in Kansas... )

Monika Schnarre, who must be one of the most beautiful women on earth. I'd never heard of her, and she's already 30? Maybe it's just the razor sharp cheek bones, strong chin, the red hair and the fact that she's covered head to toe in black leather...

Gabrielle Anwar, who is hot although not quite up to her more youthful standard of Body Snatchers (1993 - what happened to _her_ career?).

Rutger Hauer seems to be having a good time reliving his Hitcher days.

CONS:

Hokey

Poor dialogue

No plot to really speak of

The actors start losing the spirit halfway through this unlikely mess, specially Gabrielle Anwar and Joe Mantegna.

Church of the Stull?

The movie has a distinctively Canadian feel to it.

I suppose the main question is why Rutger Hauer's even in this film, playing a role that could have been played by literally anyone and only interacting with about two other cast members throughout the entire running time. But never mind.

Yes. Turbulence 3, then. Here's the story: a Goth rocker holds a live Internet-broadcast concert on a plane, but gets himself knocked out and replaced by a conveniently identical Satanic terrorist who wants to crash the plane into Kansas, leaving him to struggle free, fight his way through the other terrorists, clear his name and save everyone on board. Yes, the hero of this film is a skinny death rocker in full Goth make-up, whose only allies are a hacker and Gabrielle Anwar as the world's least convincing FBI agent several hundred miles away.

Sound good? Go ahead, watch it - it's appalling, and tries to serve up all the very worst Hollywood cliches as if they were ingredients in a full gourmet meal. Where's Ray Liotta when you need him?

The bizarre pitch for this airborne thriller is Passenger 57 (1992) starring Marilyn Manson. It involves a controversial heavy metal group performing an internet-streamed gig aboard a jumbo jet, co-piloted by Rutger Hauer, that's hijacked by Satanists.

Screenwriter Wade Ferley clearly had no shortage of ideas, the problem is he didn't know how to develop them and so the film skitters between several characters involved with or observing the unfolding mayhem.

Despite all the onboard chaos, much of the time is spent with additional characters on the ground. A pointless sub-plot involves a Clarice Starling-style FBI agent tracking down a notorious computer hacker and other scenes involve Joe Mantegna.

Director Jorge Montesi has an extensive history in television and a handful of features under his belt. Unfortunately his experience fails to give the film anything more than a cheap TV movie feel. Locations are suspiciously absent of extras and very bland to look at, while the principle cast members spend the majority of the time in separate locations from which the fail to venture far from.

An early indication of budgetary limitations is the opening sequence. Craven is identified as this fictional world's Marilyn Manson, a character whose popularity is equalled only by his controversial status. Greeting him at the airport are his legion of dedicated fans and protesters clearly representing the religious right. But either side's numbers are so few it's difficult to suspend disbelief and enter into the story.

However, once you accept its limitations of budget and scale, Turbulence 3 becomes a fun thrill ride surpassing the majority of Airport (1969) clones. While its use of air disaster clichés, such as the on-board threat, communications with the tower/ground authorities and the final landing sequence (followed by the shot of emergency vehicles and survivors exiting the plane), place it within a specific genre, it's cultural themes to mark is very much as a film of it's time. It has a unique identity and it's trying to capture the zeitgeist; it just does it badly.

This is one of those movies in which there are plenty of familiar faces and names, but none of these are the main characters. Many in Turbulence 3's supporting cast have a history in the air disaster genre. Craig Sheffer returns from Turbulence 2: Fear of Flying (1999) but portrays a different character, unconvincingly cast as a hippie hacker. Sheffer and co-star Gabrielle Anwar and Rutger Hauer were also together in Flying Virus (also made in 2001) and he completed a quadrilogy of air disasters with TV movie Cabin Pressure (2002). Co-star Joe Mantegna had earlier appeared in Airspeed (1998).

The most complex sequences take place aboard the plane and feature none of the headlined stars. Unknown John Mann got a chance to shine in the dual role of Slade Craven and his psychotic doppelgänger. Craven is not as embarrassingly cartoonish as he could have been and Mann makes the role his own, exploring not only the public and private dimension of the rock star, but also his truly deranged double - enhanced with a vocal dub.

Mann, who performs 2 mediocre tracks as Craven, does a good job in stripping away the theatrical aspect of his character without ever removing his make-up. Unfortunately the impact is undermined by a late moment where our mock-satanic hero takes a moment to pray, as if to confirm he is indeed a good man.

The starring role in Turbulence 3 didn't do much for Mann's career. He eventually made it to the higher profile films in roles such as as "bouncer" in Catwoman (2004), "convict" in The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) and "Viking doctor" in Pathfinder (2007).

The people that made this movie must have forgotten what point they were trying to make. We see a FBI agent that starts out arresting a hacker as he is breaking into some sort of video network. The FBI agent played by Gabrielle Anwar who has the looks of Bambi meets secretary from anonymous fashion show (may her acting career rest in peace after this) arrives at the scene completely alone and doesn't report anything to her HQ when she has done the arrest. Oh gee. Thats just how they do in real life?? NOT.

Not much later they cooperate trying to solve an unraveling murder case. Still in the hackers flat and still without informing anyone - until she talks to her superior by accident. And guess what - he has also started working on the same case. What a coincidence! The movie goes on and on with the same completely unbelievable and inconsistent plot. Everything is out of place and phony down to every little detail.

The executive producer should have paid more attention from the very start and terminated the production, since this is one of the movies that should never have been made.

I was kind of mystified by the fact that they made two sequels to "Turbulence", a movie that didn't do well with both critics and the box office. Finally seeing it several months ago, I could understand why. But I decided to see this second "sequel" (it has nothing to do with the events of the first movie... and probably the second movie as well) since I had the opportunity to see it for free.

Well, this Canadian movie is one of the few that has something distinctly Canadian in it (the plane is flying to the city Toronto). And the production values aren't as cheap as with many Canadian films, though some of the interiors of the plane look kind of cheesy. (Plus, the stock footage used is VERY obvious, since it came from a much more expensive film.) Also, I found that the choice for the hero chosen to fight the villains on the plane kind of a surprise. Usually this particular kind of character in hostage situations like this remains helpless until the very end.

That's about all that's positive I can say about this movie. While I didn't find the movie terrible, I did find it pretty dull. There are pretty much no surprises in this movie. If you've seen one hostage movie, you have seen this one. Plus, the movie took a surprisingly long time to unfold - 3/4 of the movie goes by before the good guys finally start fighting back.

Note to Rutger Hauer fans - it's pretty obvious that all of his scenes were filmed in one day.