TERMINAL VELOCITY
A film review by Rob Furr
Copyright 1994 Rob Furr
TERMINAL VELOCITY, the new Charlie Sheen vehicle, is a hard movie to review. Not because of any inherent problem with the movie itself, but because delivering my honest opinion is going to make me look like an idiot.
My honest opinion: I liked it.
Really.
Believe it or not, I consider TERMINAL VELOCITY to be well worth the five-seventy-five and two hours I spent on it.
Now, I'm *sure* that that statement is going to be met with disagreement, but that's not what's going to get me in trouble. What's going to get me in trouble is the rest of this review. To wit:
The first adjective that comes to mind when describing TERMINAL VELOCITY is "Hitchcockian." If Alfred Hitchcock was a modern B-movie director, this is the sort of movie he'd make. Forget FRANTIC and the other stale reworkings of the Master's art; Hitchcock at his best was able to conjure a fearful, paranoia-laden energy that his modern followers can only imitate. TERMINAL VELOCITY, on the other hand, manages to weave something approximating the Hitchcock aura out of its B-movie roots. It's nowhere near as good as the Master's best, but, to be quite honest, I'd rather sit through TERMINAL VELOCITY again than TOPAZ.
In fact, TERMINAL VELOCITY is Hitchcockian enough that I'm not going to describe the plot beyond the basics: There's this sort-of-rebel parachute instructor who takes a student up, see, and ....
... and then it gets complicated. Sort of.
The plot is even a rough approximation of the Hitchcock plot. The general description is Hitchcockian enough; slightly-tarnished Everyman gets into a situation over his head in which nothing and no-one is what it seems. Even some of the specifics are Hitchcockian; the rocket sled ride (which was visually impressive, but otherwise mostly pointless) brought the Redcap scene from NORTH BY NORTHWEST to mind (and, furthermore, there's even a scene that's almost identical to the classic biplane sequence from that movie.) There's a MacGuffin, which, in true Hitchcock style, is never satisfactorally explained (what was it doing on a German plane?), there's a underlying Cold War air to it, and so on.
Now, before you, the reader, fire up your mail program to tell me that I'm trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, let me qualify this general statement:
No, TERMINAL VELOCITY is not a great movie. There are some howlingly bad scenes, some rather tasteless scenes, and a conclusion that is a deus literally ex machina, and if you have a low tolerance for cheap characterization, then you might want to avoid this movie.
On the other hand, if you're willing to put up with some stupidity on the part of the filmmakers, you might stand an excellent chance of actually enjoying this movie. On the Furr Scale, TERMINAL VELOCITY is either a three-star two star movie, or a two-star three star movie. (The Furr Scale rates movies on ambition as well as quality; you shouldn't expect a movie that's trying to be AMADEUS to be better or worse in the same way as a movie that's trying to be EVIL DEAD 2. HEAVEN'S GATE is a one-star four-star movie ... that is, it's an utterly rotten movie that was trying to be great, and ROBOCOP is a three-star three star movie; a darn good movie that was trying to be darn good.) It's hard to tell with TERMINAL VELOCITY whether it was trying to be a B movie, in which case it was pretty darn good, or an A movie, in which case it was merely average. Considering all in all, I'm leaning towards three-star two star (an above average B movie.)
Whatever it is, it's worth a look. If you're unsure, give it a matinee performance; it's definitely worth *that*.
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