Action Hero MoviesThere’s no Keanu Reeves this time round, but Sandra Bullock is back, along with the odd half decent supporting cast member.
There are some weak attemps at sitcom humour early on, followed by a Pedovore joke at the 19 minute mark (marking the beginning of a long run of similarly themed dodginess — only some of which will be recognised by the viewer, if any).
This movie eventually starts to become interesting, shortly after 20 minutes in, as the main antagonist tricks his way into the ship’s control room and secretly plants a listening device under the table, with everyone in the room oblivious.
Unfortunately, after a brief interesting patch, the movie reverts to back-to-back examples of couples fighting. Once on the TV they’re watching, then once between the last cast members. I think it’s safe to say already that this is not a particularly serious action movie, and its producers are far more interested in toying with the viewer. No wonder Keanu turned it down, in spite of him being fond of Sandra Bullock.
Before the end of the first hour, there’s a prolonged panic-fest as people try to abandom ship, someone gets stuck in a lift, some people fall off the side of the ship, etc. Hardly high quality entertainment.
By the 1 hour mark it’s got quite a mix of action and drama. It looks set for a So-So rating if it continues at this level of production. There’s people being trapped in flooded rooms, and people being trapped in rooms with bombs going off. It’s clearly not designed to be consistently pleasant viewing, but if you fast forward through what needs skipping you can still somewhat enjoy it.
Most of the last hour consists of trying to stop the ship from crashing.
In the end, I agree with the verdict from half way through, and give it a So-So rating — that’s just a couple levels shy of Bang Average, and is on a par with the original Speed movie from 1994 — this one being a bit more adventurous in its stunts, but lacking Keanu.