Drop Zone Reviews

John Badham's DROP ZONE successfully transposes POINT BREAK to the world of sky-diving. While star Wesley Snipes hasn't yet mastered the insouciant delivery that 90s action flicks seem to demand, the film's action set-pieces are effective and the macho mystique of the skydiving subculture is appealingly sketched. Aboard a commercial airliner, U.S. Marshall Pete Nessip (Snipes) and his brother Terry (a beefed-up Malcolm-Jamal Warner) are escorting criminal computer wizard Earl Leedy (Michael Jeter) to a high-security prison. When an apparent terrorist hijack attempt blows a hole in the plane, through which Leedy and the terrorists, as well as Terry, are sucked out, a devastated Nessip is blamed for overreacting and forced to turn in his badge. He soon begins to suspect that the assault may have been an elaborate prison break. Meanwhile, ex-DEA loose cannon and renegade skydiver Ty Moncrief (Gary Busey) is revealed as the mastermind behind the coup, which culminated in the first-ever parachute jump from a commercial jet at 30,000 feet. He plans to use Leady to hack into the DEA mainframe computer in Washington, auctioning off the names of undercover agents to drug cartels worldwide. This is to be accomplished during an Independence Day parachute exhibition and fireworks display, which is the one day every year when security is loosened around the airspace above Washington, D.C., "the most restricted drop zone in the world." Intuiting that skydiving played some part in the plane crash, Nessip finds his way to Jess Crossman (Yancy Butler), a world-class skydiver and ex-con, whose ex-husband Jagger, unbeknownst to all, is one of Busey's crack team. She agrees to act as Nessip's entree into this closed world, if he will sponsor her team for the competition. When one of the team regulars is injured, and foul play suspected, rookie Nessip is tapped as a fourth. And once Jagger is found dead, tangled in some high-voltage power lines, it's obvious his death was no accident, and Crossman seeks revenge. She steals away aboard Moncrief's plane during the spectacular July Fourth parachute exhibition, which serves as cover for the planned break-in at DEA headquarters. Nessip and the other divers track them there, where a final shootout rescues Crossman and dispatches the evildoers. DROP ZONE doesn't have the visual swagger or weird homoerotic charge that Kathryn Bigelow brought to its obvious model, 1991's POINT BREAK, but the always reliable Badham commands the pace of an action picture as well as any director in Hollywood. The dour Snipes looks lost much of the time, but Busey keeps things jumping as a gleefully demented villain. Ample and effective use is made of the matte-screen mid-air thrill effects perfected in CLIFFHANGER, and the skydiving footage provides the requisite vertiginous flutters. Although the whole thing doesn't bear much scrutiny, it delivers the ride promised at the outset, which is more than films of this kind can often claim. (Violence, substance abuse, profanity.)