Screams “We got nuthin but Wesley for ya”.
I liked Drop Zone better when it was called Point Break, it had more action, a few more jokes, and Gary Busey was on the other side. It also wasn’t confined to the ‘this will always be the cutting edge of danger… until the X-Games are invented’ world of sky diving.
Even though it is very nearly 20 years old Drop Zone opens with an Oprah joke, I wonder if in another 20 years the kids will wonder who the one they call Lady Ga-Ga is?
While performing a taxi-service by taking a white collar computer-genius criminal to trial, US Marshalls come under attack by terrorists who hi-jack the plane, killing one of the Marshalls in the process. (It is strange in this pre 9/11 world to see the guns galore emerging as the plane is taken over.)
The partner of the slain Marshall happened to be his brother Pete (Wesley Snipes), he lands to find that the cops are inexplicably blaming the many civilian deaths upon his dead brother. Ummmm didn’t the cops think to ask some of the passengers what happened? What about the pilots or crew?
Regardless of logic Pete finds himself suspended and decides to pursue the real men responsible, something that the FBI has not bothered with as they have assumed that no-one could survive the fall from a 747 – parachute or not.
So Pete ‘dives’ into the close-knit world of competitive sky-diving and all the death defying colourful characters that inhabit it. Fortunately the very first person he runs into – the bushy eye-browed, smoky voiced Jessie – seems to know everyone, including the criminal types that Pete is hunting (though that fact remains unbeknownst to both for a while).
Despite the fact that no-one thinks to ask Pete exactly why he needs to be a competitive sky-diver in order to locate his prey Pete does just that, joining Jessie’s crew for an upcoming demonstration over a major US capital city, the same big jump that the nefarious types are using as cover for their own shenanigans.
What ensues is a never ending series of hijinks, sabotage and near misses, which culminate in the inevitable show down between Pete and the good parachute jumping guys and the bad parachute jumping guys, lead by Gary Busey as Ty, all with the ‘gee can you believe these guys are so damn death defying theme’ as a backdrop.
While it is not their fault that the special effects limitations of the early 90s production time result in some shonky moments in the climactic stages, it does hamper the effectiveness of the film. Not that Drop Zone is any great shakes in any case, I might label it Point Break in the air, but that might unfairly lead you to expect some decent action scenes when in fact this is not the case.
Final Rating – 6 / 10. At the time they were trying to hype up Wesley Snipes as the next big action star to take the reins from Arnie and Sly, they did him no favours with this roman candle (google it).
