Cabin Pressure (2001)
A fully automated commercial jetliner is prepared to make its maiden voyage. Without an on-flight pilot, the craft relies on satellite linking for its course. But when the plane suddenly deviates from its determined route and establishes a circular pattern over Seattle, it becomes evident that the craft has been hijacked by a disgruntled former airline employee who has hacked into the flight's computer system from his apartment, somewhere in the United States. Now, a former discredited Navy pilot and an oddball technician must race against the clock to find where the angry employee is, and regain control of the plane before it crashes into the city.
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HIJACK'D is a cheap and cheerful TV movie detailing a plane which is hijacked by a computer geek. A renegade pilot is the only guy who has the power to fight back against this mastermind, so the race is on to save the day and the passengers. And if that high drama wasn't enough, a girl has been bitten by a poisonous spider so it's a race against time to save her, too. This is laughably cheesy entertainment, with wooden cast members whose performances range between boredom and overacting. I was amused to see Francoise Yip, the femme fatale of Hong Kong cinema, in a supporting role, but this is nothing to get excited about.
Something about a computer hacker hijacking the first self-driven plane is what you'll get in this instantly forgettable made-for-TV cut-rate thriller. Not awful enough to outright detest, bu not nearly competent enough to get invested in the film. I guess the most one can say for I is that it is wahat it is. Nothing special to see more. Good fodder for having something as background noise while you do something else. Not the type of film that you'll miss any huge plot points if you choose to only pay fleeting attention to. The most noteworthy thing is that it took 5 writers to come up with this tripe.Eye Candy: Rachel Hayward gets topless
If I ever met Craig Sheffer, one of the first things I'd ask him would be why after the clichéd but admittedly hilarious mess that was Turbulence 2: Fear Of Flying did he go on to star in not one, but three other straight to video flicks with very similar scripts and similarly limp production values. Make no mistake, Fear Of Flying and Heavy Metal are both terrible movies but are so clichéd, cheap and poorly acted that they are hilarious to watch, and this is just as bad the others, which equals just as amusing.Having saved the world from an anthrax bomb in Fear Of Flying, saved the world from being taken over by evil in Heavy Metal, big Craig now has the responsibility of stopping a hacker from control of the world's first automated jetliner is the! Yeah, as if! The plot itself is the source of major hilarity. The overall look of the movie has that whole Canadian B-movie feel. No stock footage is used this time around, instead we have a phony CGI plane which crashes with very cheap and unconvincing special effects.But it's with the characters where it really gets amusing. First up is Sheffer's character, who is fired for saying he flies better when drunk. Like in Fear Of Flying, he's clearly phoning his performance and doesn't do much other than read his lines. It really makes me wonder why he decided to take the lead in four extremely similar B-movies. John Piper Ferguson appears to be in a different film, and appears to be enjoying every minute of his ridiculous character, which is a stereotypical "computer geek". He's dressed in drab clothes and sporting greasy hair and glasses, and his best friend is a rare Australian spider! The writers also seem confused as to whether this character is an evil psychopathic menace, or a pathetic character who we're supposed be sympathetic to. He befriends a little girl who lives in the same block, which appears to be an attempt to humanise the character. The way he handles the character itself is pretty hilarious. Not for one second taking it seriously, he jumps around the room and hams it up to the max. His character is great fun to watch but not exactly in the way I believe the filmmakers intended it to be. He's clearly just poking fun at the ridiculous character and seems bemused to have this on his CV. The movie itself is also incredibly poorly pieced together. It feels like they made it as they went on, culminating in an ending so ridiculous that I can't even begin to describe it. I won't spoil it for you but I laughed a LOT when I saw what finally lead them to the "hacker". It involves the pet spider and an extremely lucky coincidental turn of events.Overall, this is rubbish and only one member of the cast seems to be aware of that, but it's at least funny rubbish. As a thriller it fails abysmally but as a comedy, it's a great laugh. If you found Turbulence 2: Fear Of Flying, Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal or Flying Virus to be entertainingly bad, then I recommend you also see this.
.... No I don`t mean the movie I mean the fact that in this American TVM the bad guy is a foreigner and he`s not British . Wow what a stroke of genius that is , the genuis . Unfortunately that`s the only radical thing about CABIN PRESSURE . Despite not being British the villain is one major cliche , a computer geek who wears a red polo neck sweater , green cords , greasy hair and spectacles , and who`s a socially inept loner whose only friend is a spider . This goes beyond cliche and becomes close to offensive . Within 20 minutes you`re wishing the computer geek is from Britain and is played by Gary Oldman or Sean Bean .And even if the producers had the money for a big name Brit actor there`s no way a star name would want to sully their reputation by appearing in this rubbish . And make no mistake this is rubbish . The bad guy is unconvincing as is the hero who`s a former alcoholic . I guess being a bland cypher he need an identifiable character flaw but that doesn`t disguise the fact that he`s just there to spout lines and save the day . But the lack of characterisation is the least of the problems with the script , let`s look at the whole concept of a computer controlled plane :isn`t there something totally ridiculous with the whole concept ? I mean I`m sure that in real life someone has thought up the whole idea and dismissed it precisely on the grounds of someone hacking into the controls . Oh look out for a very contrived plot twist where someone turns up at the hospital after being bitten by a funnel web spider , which also leads to a plot hole by the hero not asking about an Austin Powers lookalikeSo what would I have done with the script ? It`s very simple , one of the characters on the plane is Senator Caulfield who is on the plane with his son and daughter in law . The daughter in law is called Brandee and she is a very fit blonde and the whole film would have worked if it was set around the premise of the computer geek being a bit of a perv and demanding the senator have sex with Brandee or else he will crash the plane . This would lead to cinema goers all over the world to discuss INDECENT PROPOSAL type questions like " If some pervy geek had hacked into a plan`s control system would you have depraved sex with your father in law if your life depended upon it ? "