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Cast: Ray Liotta, Lauren Holly, Hector Elizondo, Ben Cross, Catherine Hicks, Rachel Ticotin, Brendan
Gleeson
Director: Robert Butler
Screenplay: Jonathan Brett
Cinematography: Lloyd Ahern, II
Music: Shirley Walker
UK Distributor: MGM
Mid-air hijackings are a well worn genre that worked quite well with Die Hard 2 and Executive Decision. But this movie is so blissfully unencumbered by originality, you have to wonder whether half a dozen other genre thrillers were ran through a computer and the script for this mess was spat out.
Ray Liotta, giving one of the worst performances by any actor in any movie since the dawn of the motion picture industry, assumes he is in a pantomime as he cackles his way around the airliner, terrorising bird-like flight attendant Lauren Holly.
Actually, that's doing a disservice to pantomimes.
So the premise is nutter on a plane. Fair enough, as long as you have an actor with the gravity of Oldman, Rickman or even Jez Quigley (Lee Boardman) from Coronation Street. To make matters worse, the aircraft is flying through a severe storm and only the autopilot stops it from crashing.
Aside from some good camerawork, Turbulence fails on just about every level.
Ben Cross pops up as a stereotypical airline captain who helps Holly out of her predicament while Total Recall's Rachel Ticotin is the assured ground crew who try to talk her down amid laughably over-the-top melodramatics.
What Liotta thought he was doing is anyone's guess. Showing not a trace of charisma or acting ability, aside from the fact that he manages to avoid looking straight into the camera, the Goodfellas veteran could have been swapped for a shop dummy and few people would have noticed the difference. Even a shop dummy can bring a certain minimalistic charm to a movie as dumb as this.
Director Robert Butler employs every cliche in the book while the relentless lightning, rain and strobe effects makes things very irritating.
Bargepoles aren't long enough for the distance you need to keep between yourself and this mess.
© 2000 Roger Crow
