DROP ZONE
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Status: OR
DROP ZONE
Starring: Wesley Snipes, Gary Busey, Yancy Butler, Michael Jeter.
Screenplay: Pete Barsocchini and John Bishop.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
While watching DROP ZONE, I kept thinking about those ski films Warren Miller has been making for years. You know the ones--they're basically a bunch of impressive stunts and nice photography. Well, DROP ZONE looks like a skydiving version of one of those films, to which someone has attempted to add a plot. I emphasize the word "attempted," and it's an extremely lackluster attempt at that. There is some great aerial footage in DROP ZONE, but the story is a complete bore, and Wesley Snipes continues to bury himself in Z-grade action films.
Snipes plays Pete Nessip, a Federal marshall assigned with his brother (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) to escort a mob computer whiz (Michael Jeter) on a prison transfer. While the plane is in mid-air, a group of terrorists hijack it, and when there is an explosion during the attack, Nessip's brother is killed, with Nessip himself blamed for contributing to the disaster. But Nessip doubts that it was a simple hijacking, and he is right: a team of expert skydivers led by Ty Moncrief (Gary Busey) intends to use the computer whiz to break into government records and provide drug dealers with the identity of undercover agents. With the aid of sometimes-reckless skydiving instructor Jessie Crossman (Yancy Butler), Nessip sets out to infiltrate the skydiving fraternity and thwart Moncrief's plan.
We've already had one skydiving movie this year (TERMINAL VELOCITY), and it wasn't a particularly good one. However, TERMINAL VELOCITY did have one very important thing going for it--no one involved seemed to be taking themselves at all seriously. It was light-hearted, and occasionally quite funny. DROP ZONE, on the other hand, is best taken with meals as a mild sedative. In lieu of creating their own set-up, screenwriters Pete Barsocchini and John Bishop appear to have given Snipes the opportunity to do PASSENGER 57 again (I suppose to get it right this time). They also wrack their brains to come up with such cinematic innovations as a bar fight and a dead relative to avenge. It's not stretching the point to say that the plot between skydiving sequences in DROP ZONE is somewhere on the order of the plot between sex scenes in your standard X-rated film.
Of course, as with that example, most viewers probably aren't coming to DROP ZONE for riveting plot turns and crackling dialogue. The skydiving sequences are fantastic, perhaps the best I've ever seen. They are creatively shot, and include some impressive synchronized stunts. As long as DROP ZONE is in the air, it is something quite exciting.
Then it hits ground again, and it burns in hard. After beginning as a rip-off of PASSENGER 57, DROP ZONE ends like a rip-off of DIE HARD, and a really bad one at that. Gary Busey delivers a performance that has stamps on it, practically sighing audibly as he wanders through a half-hearted version of his UNDER SIEGE psycho act. It is inexcusable in an action thriller to have a boring villain, and Busey has not an ounce of charisma in this role. Director John Badham has made exciting films in the past, but even he appears to be slumming here. While the action in the air (which was not his to shoot) is great, the action on the ground is often ineptly staged and badly edited.
What is genuinely depressing is watching the direction Wesley Snipes' career is taking. Snipes is a fine actor with a tremendous range, but for a few years now he has appeared almost exclusively in bad action films. It is fine that he has carved out a niche for himself, and heaven knows it's not easy being an African-American leading man in Hollywood. But Snipes should really think about taking a few character parts that force producers to take him seriously as an actor, and for him to have a chance at the kind of roles Samuel L. Jackson and Laurence Fishburne are given a shot at. His performance in DROP ZONE is thoroughly competent, but that's all it has to be. If he contines to appear in films like DROP ZONE, he might as well take his career and jump out of a plane with it. Without a parachute.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 skydives: 3.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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