Air Rage Reviews

A military extremist romp in the AIRPORT '77 vein. Colonel Sykes (Cyril O'Reilly) is shocked at having been court-martialed and imprisoned for his zealous pursuit of anti-Americanism, so he breaks out of federal prison and vows to wreak havoc on the government that dishonored him. Rounding up his equally disgraced comrades, the patriot-turned-traitor targets Flight 777, whose passenger list includes General Prescott (Alex Cord), the very prosecutor who threw the book at Sykes. En route to an anti-terrorism conference, Prescott carries a top-secret disc that Sykes intends to auction off to Uncle Sam's enemies. Sykes' crew hijacks the plane, and the NSA precipitously prepares to blast it out of the sky rather than lose the disc to unfriendly nations. Meanwhile, stewardess Kelly (Kim Oja) undermines Sykes' takeover as best she can. In a last ditch effort, the US government sends a rescue squad in a second plane. Their mission is to hook onto Flight 777 and board it in mid-air, but the team, headed by Matthew Marshall (Ice-T), proves no match for Sykes' cutthroats. Kelly and Marshall start dumping jet fuel and picking off the bad guys, but after Marshall sustains life-threatening wounds, Kelly must become an instant marine and learn to fly the plane after its pilot and co-pilot are executed. Unable to muffle the rap cadences in his speech, Ice-T inadvertently turns his performance here into an exercise in camp. His comical implausibility is woefully apparent in this routine adventure populated by cardboard fascists and one-dimensional heroes.