#jet pilot is a fucking banger

[nu-metal-confessions]

36 by SOAD is hated by a lot of SOAD fans because it's too short 🙄 I can say the same thing about DDevil, Jet Pilot, Cubert, and Bubbles

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[everymovie2020]

Turbulence (1997)

Date watched:  13 December 2019

I don't know what I was expecting with this. A disaster movie set exclusively on a plane experiencing turbulence, I guess?  It's so much more than that.

This is a slasher film set on a plane experiencing severe turbulence suspense thriller but also it's a Christmas movie?

It is a certified 10 out of 10 banger.  I enjoyed this so much and I really wasn't expecting to.  I don't think I have ever seen it before – but I feel like I probably did watch it when was I a kid, because it came out in 1997 and it just seems like the kind of thing I definitely would've watched.  I had no memory of it anyway, so every twist and turn came as a complete surprise.

I was expecting Ray Liotta to be the hero.

He is not the hero.

Lauren Holly is the goddamn hero of this film and she lands that plane all on her own.  She is a mother fuckin' boss queen and I was very much Team Lauren Holly for the whole movie.

Let's get into the plot of this absolute masterpiece of filmmaking:

Lauren Holly is a flight attendant, it's Christmas and she has to work.  The flight she is working has only about twenty people on it – about eight of them are passengers, another four are police, two are criminals and the rest are flight crew.  This is a massive passenger plane.  This passenger plane has two storeys.  It is so big and for some reason there is absolutely nobody on it.  Why?  It is not explained.

Amazing though, like, I dream of a flight like that. I would stretch out on three seats and sleep the whole way.

Anyway, the criminals are Brendan Gleeson and Ray Liotta who spends the first half of the movie talking very unconvincingly about how he didn't do whatever it is he's been charged with and also that the cops planted evidence.  I didn't believe him right away because a) it's Ray Liotta, and b) he had full on crazy eyes.

He takes a shine to Lauren Holly straight away, who for some reason wasn't as creeped out by him as I was.  The mum from Seventh Heaven even forces Lauren Holly to take his section of the plane because she was so creeped out.

So then, and I'm not clear on whether this was planned but I feel like it somehow was – in the process of Brendan Gleeson going to the bathroom with his police officer escorts, and the plane beginning to experience the turbulence for which the film is named, shit quite literally hits the fan.  Brendan Gleeson kills one of the cops and then one by one the rest of them die, there's shooting, someone blows a hole through one of the windows and the plane is depressurised (nobody gets sucked out through the hole though, to my endless disappointment), Lauren Holly – boss queen – saves the day by plugging it up with a briefcase (feel like that wouldn't have actually done the job IRL but what do I know), and somehow Ray Liotta ends up taking over.

So by the end of this sequence, all of the cops are dead.  The pilot got involved and died as well, then the other pilot tried to radio for help as the plane hit massive turbulence, he got thrown all around the cockpit and pretty much snapped in half, and he died too.

Now, at this point, Lauren Holly does not think that Ray Liotta is the dangerous serial killer that she has been told he is. For some reason, she doesn't see full on crazy when she looks into his eyes.  She trusts him enough to give him the keys to the cockpit, which is where he finds the dead pilot and then, for some reason, stuffs him into the crew sleeping area.  Why?  I have no fucking idea other than the fact that he's a psycho.

So now we're in a situation where all the cops are dead.  The pilots are dead.  The flight crew is in charge but none of them can fly a plane.  Ray Liotta has yet to reveal his true colours.

Lauren Holly goes up to the cockpit, realises that the co-pilot is dead and tries to call for help.  A very nice British pilot is on the ground in the cockpit of his plane, and he guides her through it.  This is not in the movie, but one hundred percent those two boned post-terrifying nightmare.

So the cops on the ground get on the line to her and they're like, "He's a serial killer.  He is not to be trusted.  Do not trust him."

Meanwhile, downstairs, Ray Liotta straight up murders the mum from Seventh Heaven and shoves all the rest of the passengers in the crew sleeping area.  He then goes back up to the cockpit, where Lauren Holly now won't let him in, and starts talking about how the mum from Seventh Heaven is injured and she needs to come down with the medical kit to give her assistance.

Like, you can understand why she would want to do that, and the plane is on autopilot, but they're flying directly into this massive storm and like, she's going to leave the cockpit?

But she does, and Ray Liotta is nowhere to be found – and this is where shit gets weird, because… he does not care that the plane could crash, he does not care that they're flying into a storm, he does not care about anything other than raping and murdering Lauren Holly.  I mean, that's his whole plan.  Rape and murder Lauren Holly and crash the plane into the sea.

I genuinely thought this movie was going to be a disaster-esque "the plane is in imminent peril, we're all going to die!" movie where Ray Liotta saves the day.

Instead, he has the crazy dialled up to 11 – he is chewing all of the scenery, ALL OF IT – and his whole plan is just to straight up murder the nice flight attendant lady who just wants to land the fucking plane. All the while maintaining his innocence?

And he arranges the corpses of all the people who died in seats and decorates them with Christmas decorations?

The man is nuts.

I was not expecting this disaster movie to turn into a non-stop thrill ride, let me tell you.

So there's a bit of cat and mouse, and meanwhile the plane is flying into this monster storm and at one point does a 360 degree barrel roll and honestly, I don't know if massive jumbo jets are built to do that but this one did.  He and Lauren Holly fight it out in the plane while undergoing severe turbulence - THE PLANE DID A BARREL ROLL - and she finally gets the better of him and locks herself in the cockpit.

At this point I’m like, it’s taken you a really, really long time to get to the point of actually locking yourself into the cockpit but okay.

So with Ray Liotta literally breaking down the cockpit door with an axe (oh hi it’s 1997, pre-9/11, things are very different re plane safety in those days), and Lauren Holly trying to guide the plane in for a landing in LA without crashing the damn thing, and the British pilot talking her through it, she finally gets the upper hand on Ray Liotta and shoots him in the head.

And then the bitch LANDS THE PLANE because that’s what HEROES DO.

She’s got a boss haircut and she’s a fuckin’ hero to boot.

So the British pilot is waiting for her when she lands the plane and again, 10/10, those two banged.  And she has earned it.  In my fanwanking of this movie, he gave her multiple orgasms.

If you’re looking for a movie with a little bit of Christmas, a little bit of romance, a little bit of suspense, a huge jumbo jet doing a barrel roll and Ray Liotta turning the crazy dial all the way up to 11, this is the one for you.