Filmic Friday 209: Turbulence

Do you guys remember the stupid Heavy Metal Die Hard On A Plane movie I reviewed a while back? With the Canadians and not making sense and all that nonsense? Well...

Oh yes. There was a first movie in the Turbulence franchise...

And we watched it!

Turbulence is a movie from 1997 that feels like it was a script from 1989 cast with actors who's current careers are... ouch.

I mean, this movie stars Ray Liotta & Hector Elizondo!

So what is the dumb, dumb story for this ridiculous movie? Uh... lemme get back to you on that...

Hector Elizondo is a (possibly) crooked cop tracking down Ray Liotta, who it turns out is a serial killer who uses teddy bears as his calling card. There's a lot of back and forth on whether or not Liotta is guilty and if Elizondo actually planted evidence, but I'll save you some bad writing and say "yes" to both. Liotta is a crazy murderer, and Elizondo is a very bad cop. Regardless, they catch Liotta and put him on, of all things, a Christmas passenger flight with another crazy murderer. Elizondo is not on the plane.

Hope you enjoy crisis centers!

Of course, Liotta and the other crazy bad guy bust loose and kill all the marshals and also the pilot (oops), but they'd never planned on killing the co-pilot by accident - he ends up breaking his neck(?) in the cockpit during some namesake turbulence. There's a lot of plotty/actiony sequences through here, but the most important thing to realize is that literally no one except for Ray Liotta and Lauren Holly matter on this flight.

Lauren Holly (left) has some pretty good acting, believe it or not.
Female leads in action movies rarely get a fair shake, and she's kind of a secret badass...

Ray Liotta goes from this unassuming guy to bonkers in 0 seconds, so that's also fun...

If you remember the "plot" structure from Turbulence 3, then you know exactly how this movie goes. There's the takeover, the initial recovery, the betrayal/revelation, the secondary recovery, the fight scene, and the landing.

The Takeover:

Ray Liotta and fellow prisoner Brendan Gleeson (with a fairly convincing twang) take over the plane and kill everyone with weapons. Liotta kills Gleeson's character because Stubbs (Gleeson) is a moron and keeps trying to open the door while the plane is in flight. Idiot. Regardless, Weaver-the-definitely-a-serial-killer (Liotta) takes over the plane. During all this ruckus, the pilot is shot and dies and the copilot slams his head into the yoke during some turbulence and dies. Liotta finds this out and freaks out.

His original plan was probably more along the lines of "Land me in a non-extradition country and I'll vanish until they arrest me for killing their women!" but now it's "Welp, I'm gonna take everyone in here with me".

The plane is, I'll note, suspiciously empty of anyone under 18 years old...


Initial Recovery:

Lauren Holly's character establishes a link with the crisis center early on, and they help her maintain the airplane's course, telling her not to worry about the (apparently) hurricane-strength storm they're approaching. It's during this time that we begin to realize that not only is Liotta's character literally a psycho, but that Elizondo has in fact planted evidence to make the case against him that much easier.

Betrayal/Revelation:

Remember the other flight attendant in that black & white picture? Liotta chokes her to death and while she doesn't know this Lauren Holly starts to realize that Liotta is, in fact, a serial killer. She wisely locks herself in the cockpit where the crisis center talks her through more of the plane's systems with the help of a British pilot. Eventually, though, Liotta convinces Holly to come out of the cockpit and tries to do horrific things to her. He's stashed the passengers and remaining flight attendants in the crew section, which is tiny, and Holly is sure he's killed them.

Secondary Recovery:

Holly breaks free from Liotta, who has gone full-on-crazy and is humming Buffalo Gals to himself while trying to kill her. She locks herself back in the cockpit with the copilot's corpse and tries to land the plan at LAX, but... it doesn't work. One of the wheels gets stuck in a car, and the feds decide that they'll just kill everyone on the plane rather than let it crash. It's stupid, because by the time their fighter jet is alongside the jet, it would just crash into the ocean... just let it crash in the ocean, crimeny.

Fight Scene:

Liotta goes full-on Jack Torrence on the cabin door (which would never work in real life...) and he and Lauren Holly have an epic fight scene throughout the entire plane past all the corpses, past the most dangerous areas, and eventually, Holly does what people rarely do in movies.

Something this butthole really deserves, in fact...

She just pops him.

With a gun.

She straight up kills him dead.

It's awesome.

The Landing:

The fighter pilot from earlier? He doesn't want to kill Lauren Holly. He shoots the car off of her landing gear (which somehow doesn't destroy the engines...) and the British pilot from earlier talks Holly into landing.

There's tension, there are emotions, and it's actually a good scene. My favorite part is that even when the movie ends, the scenes don't stop. The whole time, even through the credits, we're shown the emergency crews helping the survivors, pulling bodies out of the plane, etc. Elizondo & co are doing what they do... it's kinda cool!


So, this is a weird, weird movie, and it's awesome. It's not very well-written, but Liotta's nutso acting more than makes up for it!

If you're looking for something to watch on a slow day and need some excitement!

That's all from me, today!

Go Enjoy Something!!!
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