Turbulence 2: Fear of Flying (1999)

Whilst not as entertaining as its prequel in this series, Turbulence 2 is nevertheless a good action movie where once again a 747 is taken over by a sadistic terrorist, who demands nothing more than no cops and refuelling at a runway of his choice. The story isn't as flimsy as it's reputation suggests and is worth a watch at least once.Actually as the main bad guy, the character Elliot (played very well by Jeffrey Nordling) is pretty good in the way he scares the plane passengers for 90 minutes (almost being nearly as entertaining as Ray Liotta in the first Turbulence), with the pick of his one liners being where he throws a lawyer out of the plane over Seattle at 10,000 feet and shouts "put a good word in for me". Classic....I reckon Ryan Weaver would of been proud of that one.On the ground, Tom Berenger mans the control tower with possibly the smallest shift in history and with seemingly with a liking for drinking pints of milk in the control tower, whilst managing a code red.So the FBI decide to shoot down the plane but luckily the good guy on board who saves the day is a hero who designs 747s, is good at hand to hand combat, knows Morse code, is familiar with the field of telecommunications - therefore knowing how to tell an ATC what radio frequency to secretly use, is able to throw a heavy container containing anthrax out of the cargo bay, land a 747 (out of a storm that has been rocking the plane for the last hour) with no ILS and no experience of landing 747s. Then he eventually makes off with the pretty girl. Only chink in his armour being that he is scared of flying, which is a handy plot line seeing as it is a plane disaster movie.

Turbulence 2: Fear Of Flying was on cable last night and I loved it. A passenger on a flight of people with fears of flying reveals himself as a terrorist and hijacks the plane, two of the passenger's "fears" magically disappear and they become hostages-come-action-heroes. By the way, Turbulence 2 is a sequel in name only to the 1997 clunker Turbulence.Craig Sheffer (from TV's teen drama One Tree Hill) and Jennifer Beals (remember her from Flashdance?) soon scheme against the "terrorists" (if you can call them that, they're that inept) and a few plot convolutions later, Sheffer has to land the plane himself.SPOILERS (but if you've seen any of these "plane" movies before, it isn't really a big issue...) After they land the plane with some help via radio, the movie amounts to a really weak ending, and the evil terrorist's death isn't satisfying at all. (stabbing himself with his own weapon... what the hell is that??) I think part of this movie's appeal is the great team Sheffer and Beals make. If this movie's on TV late one night, then I suggest you check it out, at least...

A group of freighted passengers, some superficial individual dramatic situations, terrorists, pilot and cabin crew killed or sick, an alert and smart passenger that has never piloted a plane (but knows a lot about planes), a helpful lady, a doctor, some torture and murders, plane with very few fuel, enough just for one trial of landing the aircraft, happy end for the survivals, a beginning of a love (sealed by a kiss) between the smart passenger that saved the survivals and the helpful lady… How many times have we, simple viewers, faced this screenplay? Turbulence 2 is exactly the same. Craig Sheffer has a horrible acting and Tom Berenger, who is a good actor, performs a secondary role in a very forgettable movie. Spending your time watching this flick is pure waste of time. My vote is four.

The first Turbulence movie really reeked (ie. it stunk out the whole cabin), mostly because there were large portions of the movie where nothing much exciting happened. They fixed this problem for Turbulence 2 with wall-to-wall non-stop heart-pounding action. OK, the action isn't heart-pounding but it's certainly wall-to-wall. There's always somebody fighting, running away, chasing, blowing something up, shooting, dying, trying to escape or, of course, flying the plane in turbulent conditions. Oh yeah, and falling...The wall-to-wall action is flanked closely on both sides with wall-to-wall stupidity, but to its credit the movie does not take itself too seriously. How could it? A fear of flying group takes a ride in a plane with a bunch of terrorists with a bomb on board which then heads towards a storm. Ha ha, yeah right. Now, it's up to the fear of flying passengers & crew to save the day which they do with varying degrees of success. When ANOTHER crew member gets shot attempting to overthrow the bad guy the bad guy says something along the lines of "Aargh! what's wrong with you people?". It's delivered beautifully.Actually, the acting in general is really very, err, well capable. I was going to say good, but in the context of this movie it wouldn't quite fit. I'm only giving this movie 4/10, but it's a fun 4/10. Chill that beer, microwave that popcorn, hand over your $2 to the video shop, switch off brain, press play, enjoy.