Passenger 57 (1992)
(In French, On Cable TV, September 2021) The mid-to-late-1990s still reign supreme as the best-ever era for big brash action movies, but the early-1990s were quickly putting together the pieces to get there, and transitioning from the dour 1980s buddy-cop clichés to the vastly more ludicrous style of the latter decade. Passenger 57 isn’t that good of a movie, whether you’re talking about an action film or a straight-ahead thriller: it’s got some weird ideas about spatial unity of action (going from the plane to a country fair and back), is slightly too enamoured of Wesley Snipes as its protagonist (although it did launch his career as an action hero), sounds dissonant with its jazzy score, and doesn’t seem quite so willing to exploit the elements at its disposal. Still, there’s some entertainment value in seeing Snipes as an overconfident air security expert dealing with a terrorist engineering his high-flying escape. As antagonist, Bruce Payne regularly out-acts Snipes by chewing scenery as if it was an onboard meal. The classic line “Always bet on black” is perfectly placed here, explaining its enduring appeal even for white guys like myself. Alex Datcher has a small but eye-catching role as a likable flight attendant, while you can spot Elizabeth Hurley as a supporting villainess. I’m still dubious about many of the script’s attempts to extend the action — the opening can sporadically slow, while the third-act detour off the plane seems out-of-place in a thriller that is otherwise centred around civil aviation. But it’s watchable, even if for the wrong reasons. There’s no doubt that the same concept would have been made very differently even five years later (case in point: Executive Decision and Air Force One), and so you can see in Passenger 57 one of the transition points between 1980s thrillers and 1990s action.
