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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 9, No. 21 |
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Terrorists have seized an airliner and there's a nuclear bomb in the cargohold. Do you negotiate or do you blow it out of the sky, killing all passengers and risking the lives of millions on hte ground below?
"FINAL APPROACH" shows Saturday, May 24, from 8-11 PM on cable's HALLMARK CHANNEL. Consult your local cable TV guide for exact airdates and times in your home area. |
Taut hijacked airliner film
deals in familiar faces, plot
of TheColumnists.com
There are lots of unpleasant things I could say about "Final Approach," the three-hour thriller that's a centerpiece of an all-disaster weekend this Saturday night on cable's The Hallmark Channel.
But why be mean-spirited? The truth is I really enjoyed the movie, thanks to taut direction, convincing dialogue and some earnest performances by a whole big bunch of familiar TV faces who now inhabit the bargain basement for TV casting directors.
"Final Approach" is really a great big tapestry of cliches, but that's not necessarily a put-down as long as the cliches are used effectively and produce suspense--lots of suspense. In fact, I'm thinking the reason all these plot turns are considered cliches is because they still work on audiences, which is why writers keep using them.
Here's the plot in a nutshell: Dean Cain is an FBI hostage negotiator who takes the blame for a Waco-style massacre when ATF and FBI SWAT teams surround the hideout of a white supremacy cult and wind up killing women, at least one child and any number of cult members. Disgraced after he punches out his superior officer (Ernie Hudson) in disgust over the outcome, Cain finds himself unemployable.
But he just happens to be on board a commercial airliner flying back to L.A. from the East Coast when terrorists take over the plane, demanding a billion dollars in bearer bonds and the release from prison of the very same cult leader captured in that infamous massacre. These cultists, led by a maniacal character played by Anthony Michael Hall, have secreted a nuclear bomb in the cargo hold, which they intend to detonate over Las Vegas or maybe even Los Angeles if their demands aren't met.
At first, things seem so tilted in favor of the terrorists that any attempt to thwart their plans seems futile. For one thing, they've already identified the armed air marshal on board the aircraft and "nullified" him silently. They also have kidnapped the wives of two World Bank executives on board the plane, almost certainly guaranteeing their cooperation in seizing the billion in bonds. They even have a laptop showing the two kidnapped wives via minicam, so the bankers can watch them be tortured, raped and killed if they don't cooperate.
As for ex-FBI guy Dean Cain--he's unarmed and surrounded by armed terrorists.
But Cain's wife (Lea Thompson) works for the FAA and is helping the FBI keep in touch with Cain via an internet link the terrorists don't know he has working. And the two kidnapped wives are slicker than seal scat and keep coming really, really close to escaping from their dimwit captors. And a TV news anchor (Tracy Gold) is onboard the hijacked aircraft, sending live reports via cellphone. And there are all kinds of brave and resourceful people among the passengers and crew members, including a nice computer nerd who has flown airliners on simulators in the past, a gutsy flight attendant (Sunny Mabrey) who's as plucky as she is beautiful and a courageous female FBI agent who will walk into the mouth of hell, unarmed, if the opportunity presents itself.
Yes, there are big dumb moments, like all the ones in which full-grown Dean Cain sneaks into the airliner toilet compartment, dislocates a section of wall and squeezes into the hold of the plane several times without anybody noticing it. But these are minor glitches in a film that manages to move along swiftly without ever boring you once in three hours.
I also need to say something about the roundup of stray TV stars that director Armand Mastroianni undertook when casting his movie. These familiar faces, almost all of them, look a little worse for wear since we saw them last, but they still all have that ability to hold our attention. Dean Cain, the amiable Superman of ABC's old "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" series, looks a good deal softer than he did when fresh from Krypton, but he's still amiable. Lea Thompson, best remembered for her 1990s NBC sitcom "Caroline in the City," now looks as if she hasn't been finding much to laugh at lately. Tracey Gold, who spent most of her teen years in ABC's "Growing Pains" and in tabloid stories about her anorexia, appears to have outgrown both. And so on.
If anybody comes close to stealing this movie, it's Anthony Michael Hall, who was a teen dork in brat pack movies of the 1980s like "16 Candles," "The Breakfast Club" and "Weird Science," then reappeared as a sci-fi hero in one of the best cable series of the recent past, "The Dead Zone." That series is now over with and Hall seems ready to launch a new career as a very effective villlain if his gig in "Final Approach" is any indication of what's coming up for him.
Altogether, "Final Approach" is a rousing three hours, thoroughly enjoyable for its action and suspense--and the chance to have a major reunion with a whole gaggle of TV stars we haven't seen for awhile.
©2008 by Ron Miller. The photos are courtesy of The Hallmark Channel. This column first posted May 19, 2008.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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