TERMINAL VELOCITY
A film review by Raymond Johnston
Copyright 1994 Raymond Johnston
Director: Deran Sarafian Starring: Charlie Sheen, Nastassja Kinski A Hollywood Picture
TERMINAL VELOCITY is basically a Summer picture. As the title implies it has a lot of high speed action. Buena Vista, the film's distributor, might have felt that it was too slight to compete with TRUE LIES or SPEED, and they have now dumped it in the middle of Oscar season hoping to get something out of it as counter programming.
TERMINAL VELOCITY succeeds as a slight diversion. Charlie Sheen plays a cynical loser, an athlete screwed over by cold war politics. Enough of his lines are funny, more funny than Arnold or Sly have been recently, to qualify this as an action comedy. Sheen manages to be just dumb enough without going over the edge into parody. The audience can feel relatively smart by being a step or two ahead of Sheen without feeling that Sheen is just too stupid to see the road in front of his face.
What really helps TERMINAL VELOCITY is the presence of Nastassja Kinski. After making just a few sporadic art film appearances over the past several years, she comes off a fresh face. As lovely and enigmatic as ever, she is perfect as VERTIGO-esque the mystery woman. Fans of Nastassja Kinski can only hope that this film marks a true return after a long hiatus.
The story itself is a lukewarm rehash of Hitchcock thriller elements, VERTIGO, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, and THE 39 STEPS in particular, with bits of CALL NORTHSIDE 777 and other films thrown in. The score (by Joel McNeely) is quite reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann's Hitchcock scores. The action moves fast enough to be enjoyable.. Much of the film involves sky-diving and plane stunts, which are difficult to make boring. In fact, some of the stunts ar quite hair-raising even if they are obvious blue screen shots. Add in a few nasty villains including the creepy QUIZ SHOW announcer (Christopher McDonald), and a halfway decent action film is almost guaranteed. It is only after the film is over that the inconsistencies of the plot become bothersome.
I would like to give the filmmakers credit for at least coming up with a post-Cold War thriller plot that uses planes in the Southwest, but does not involve cheesy South American drug lords.
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