Altitude (2018)

Here's the thing about my movie reviews. I often forget to mention the musical scores, I am woefully forgetful when it comes to namechecking people like cinematographers and designers (people that are vital to helping the director create their vision), and I don't always write essays based around the themes and subtext of the more meaningful cinematic classics I have watched over the years. Sometimes I try, don't get me wrong, but I'm often aiming to just relay a general feeling about the films I have watched. My reviews are often just about my reaction, as opposed to being a full dissection. Sometimes I manage to pack a bit more in there, and am always happy when the thoughts and words flow well for me, and sometimes I am happy that I am watching another film that doesn't really need such thoughtful criticism.

Altitude certainly falls into that latter camp.

Denise Richards plays Gretchen Blair, a female FBI agent who has boarded a flight after having a very bad time of things recently. She gets angry at an inconsiderate idiot who has ended up sitting in her seat and ends up being taken to first class. Result. Sitting alongside a man named Terry (Kirk Barker), her moment of happiness is short-lived. Some people want Terry, or at least what he has hidden away from them, and that means that they want to take control of the flight. Greer Grammer is the woman in charge of the criminal plan, and Dolph Lundgren is her right hand man (although she also has other muscle on hand, with the most recognisable being Chuck Liddell).

Altitude is preposterous. Of course it is. The characters are all ridiculous clichés, very few moments are plausible, and it's a film in which viewers have to accept Richards as the strong and smart goodie up against Lundgren.

Director Alex Merkin tries to keep everything moving along zippily enough, throwing occasional distractions in (like Jonathan Lipnicki as an over the top, dancing and singing, air steward) to break up the overly familiar plotting as we get the opening situation that puts our lead in need of a rest, an overview of the plane and the passengers, developing awareness of the dangerous plot, etc. The script, by Jesse Mittelstadt, also helps here, with the material sadly growing weaker when the actual action starts to take place. Neither Merkin nor Mittelstadt can do enough to get this anywhere close to any of the other, superior, plane-based action thrillers that we've already seen over the years. And some of the dialogue is either laughably cheesy or cringe-inducing, depending on your mindset.

Richards is okay in her role (although I did spend the majority of the movie squinting at the screen and asking myself "is that Denise Richards?"), and Barker is fine, if fairly bland. That leaves it to the villains to liven things up. They don't quite manage it, mainly due to the fact that Granmer plays her role in a way that makes you wish someone had been able to negotiate a fee for Krysten Ritter, and also the fact that Lundgren is sorely underused (he spends most of his screentime actually flying the plane). The least said about Liddell the better, but it's worth mentioning Jordi Vilasulo, who does a decent job as the air marshall who gets involved in the situation.

You could do a lot worse if you're after a mindless slice of action, which is all it is trying to provide. I'll watch anything Lundgren does, he improves pretty much any film that he stars in, and this may not be one of his better films, but it's still a fun one.

5/10

You can pick up the film, under the name "Hijacked", here.
Americans can get it here.

Altitude (2010)

A bunch of hip, young folk are going to a Coldplay concert (okay, maybe they're not quite as hip as they'd like to think) and are doing so by flying their in a small plane because, y'know, one of them has been taking lots of flight lessons. Things start getting a bit hairy when some malfunction leads to the plane rising higher and higher with there seeming to be no solution for the terrified passengers. And there seems to be more in the skies around them than just obscuring clouds.

Written by Paul A. Birkett, Altitude feels very much like some half-hour Twilight Zone episode stretched into a flimsy 90 minute movie. The direction by Kaare Andrews doesn't really help either, although he doesn't do anything majorly wrong he doesn't do anything fantastic either and the whole thing has a very pedestrian feel to it.

The cast? Oh dear. Jessica Lowndes in the lead role obviously read the script and was so happy to be able to pretend that she actually knew how to handle a plane that she forgot she would have to act at any other time. To say that she's on autopilot is kind of insulting to autopilots, they at least do what's expected of them. Landon Liboiron plays the quiet, twitchy lad who has somehow been able to go out with Miss Lowndes for a while and there's no way you can believe this. Their characters seem incompatible and have no chemistry whatsoever. The other main actors (Julianna Guill, Ryan Donowho and Jake Weary) fare slightly better but can never rise above the mediocre level of the material they have to work with.

Altitude has one or two ideas in there that are almost good, almost enjoyable. If it was taken apart and completely reworked, with the focus on one or two impressive aspects and an overhaul of the ridiculous ending that I pretty much saw coming from the off (despite how outlandish it seems), then it could be something decent.

But it hasn't been taken apart and reworked. And we're stuck with that terrible ending. It's lucky to get a distinctly average score, more for a couple of the ideas and potential than the end result.


5/10.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Altitude-DVD-Jessica-Lowndes/dp/B004AFK7U4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341341912&sr=8-1