Passenger 57 (1992) Warner Bros./Action RT: 84 minutes Rated R (strong violence and language) Director: Kevin Hooks Screenplay: David Loughery and Dan Gordon Music: Stanley Clarke Cinematography: Mark Irwin Release date: November 6, 1992 (US) Cast: Wesley Snipes, Bruce Payne, Tom Sizemore, Alex Datcher, Bruce Greenwood, Robert Hooks, Elizabeth Hurley, Michael Horse, Marc Macaulay, Ernie Lively, Duchess Tomasello, William Edward Roberts, James Short. Box Office: $44M (US)/$66.5M (World)
Rating: *** ½
The good thing about the Wesley Snipes (New Jack City) actioner Passenger 57 is that with an 84-minute running time, it doesn’t have time to get bogged down in extraneous details and needless subplots. The characters may be somewhat one-dimensional, but that doesn’t really matter because it delivers exactly what the fans want, non-stop action at rapid speed.
John Cutter (Snipes) is an airline security expert who finds himself on a flight that gets hijacked by Charles Rane (Payne, Highlander: Endgame), an international terrorist in the custody of two FBI agents. He was captured just before he was to undergo plastic surgery to alter his appearance. Once the plane is airborne, Rane’s associates help him escape custody and take over the flight. Cutter is in the bathroom when this goes down. Now it’s on him to take out the terrorists and prevent Rane from escaping.
Cutter manages to get word of the hijacking to his friend on the ground, airline executive Sly Delvecchio (Sizemore, Natural Born Killers), by way of a public pay phone on the plane. Everybody springs into action on the ground. Feds and cops try to negotiate with Rane for the safe return of the innocent passengers. Meanwhile, Cutter and flight attendant Marti (Datcher, Rage and Honor) try to force the plane to land by dumping its fuel. It sounds a lot like a Die Hard movie, no?
Yes, Passenger 57 is absolutely formulaic, but director Kevin Hooks (Fled) keeps things moving along at such a pace that you don’t stop and think you’ve seen it all before. This is the first movie that established Snipes as a bona fide action star. With his awesome martial arts moves and wise ass comments, he makes a hero that we all know and like. It’s been said that Snipes bears an uncanny resemblance to Arsenio Hall and he does. It leads to one of the movie’s funniest scenes when an elderly woman seated next to him on the plane tells him that she watches his show all the time. She even does the “woop woop woop!” thing.
Datcher makes a decent female lead. Her initial meeting with Cutter is right out of the action movie playbook. Once a decorated cop, he now teaches a self-defense class for flight attendants. He’s never gotten over the murder of his wife during a convenience store robbery. He humiliates Marti in class after she disarms him during a simulated hijacking. No surprise, she’s working the ill-fated flight. She’s the one Cutter recruits to help him take down the bad guys and girl (Hurley, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery). Of course you know that their mutual dislike will turn into something else by the time the closing credits roll.
Unlike the Airport movies or The Delta Force, you never get to know any of the passengers other than 57 in Passenger 57. They’re just people on the plane, potential victims. While I liked that aspect of the aforementioned films, it doesn’t figure into the plot here. The main point is to deliver a lot of action and violence. In that respect, the movie succeeds. The action doesn’t even stop when Passenger 57 hits the ground as Cutter continues to pursue the terrorists through a county fair near a small airfield where the plane is forced to land to refuel. The only negative thing about this movie is that it depicts the local police as thick-headed, bigoted rednecks who refuse to believe that Cutter is not one of the terrorists. That’s kind of an unfair stereotype, but it does lend some comic relief to the proceedings. Meanwhile, the president of the airline Stuart Ramsey (Greenwood, Double Jeopardy) tries to do anything he can to make his airline look good, that it wasn’t their fault that the plane got hijacked. Typical corporate businessman, right?
Like I said, Passenger 57 gets right to it with the action and thrills. The main character’s past tragedy is about as deep as it gets unless you count the brief mentioning of Rane’s unfortunate childhood, but it’s only spoken of in general terms. In a way, Rane reminded me of another famous movie terrorist, Wulfgar from Nighthawks except we really don’t fully understand the motives behind Rane’s crimes whereas in the 1981 thriller, we get to know Wulfgar and why he’s doing all those terrible things. Even so, Payne makes for a perfectly loathsome villain.
Overall, Passenger 57 is a very good action flick. It’s short and to the point. It’s simple-minded and rocks hard. It’s 90s action movie cool at its finest.
