Passenger 57

Passenger 57 (1992)

Runtime: 84 minutes

Directed by: Kevin Hooks

Starring: Wesley Snipes, Bruce Payne, Tom Sizemore, Alex Datcher, Bruce Greenwood

From: Warner Bros.

Yeah, I will first mention what happened last night… it was a tragedy that an American Airlines flight (out of Wichita; no, no one I know was on the plane) collided w/ a military helicopter in the air over Washington, D.C., resulting in 67 people passing away. Of course, people on Twitter made it political—I won’t do so. Those not in the United States, you should be glad you’re not given the temperament of everyone here once a certain someone returned to power. I won’t immediately think “sabotage!” or “conspiracy!” I’ll wait to hear the opinions of the experts before forming an opinion myself; presumably it will be months until 

At least in the world of cinema, a hero can be on board an airplane when a captured terrorist and his minions commandeer a passenger aircraft on its way to Los Angeles. Thankfully in a post 9/11 world, it is much more difficult to sneak a gun on an airplane. I did see this film once—back in the VHS days, likely soon after it was first released on VHS. Thus, there were only a few faint memories; cultural osmosis is how I remembered Wesley Snipes uttering “Always bet on black!”

After viewing the film—wow is it a dumb Die Hard clone! After hilarious of its time opening credits-where the surprising revelations came that for some reason the lead villain has the same name as William Devane’s character in Rolling Thunder (!) and jazz legend Stanley Clarke was the composer-Bruce Payne proclaims he doesn’t want anesthesia for his facial plastic surgery! What?! As Rane’s flown to Los Angeles commercially, the 57th passenger on the plane is law enforcement badass John Cutter (Snipes); what fortunate luck that he’s present for Rane’s hijacking scheme.

I was thankful that this provided unintentional laughs for viewing this afternoon; that crash was a bummer so a dopey action film did brighten my mood. Heck, The movie is immeasurably helped by the presence of Snipes as the lead. I’ve only reviewed a few of his movies on Letterboxd although there were a few others I saw before my time on the site. What a star he was; a shame that-among other things-he felt that paying taxes was optional! Payne was also fun as the big bad. The film had several other familiar faces: Tom Sizemore, Bruce Greenwood, Robert Hooks, Ernie Lively, and it was also the first time I’d ever seen Elizabeth Hurley. 

As stump-dumb as Passenger 57 was, I can also appreciate a modestly-budgeted R-rated action film which had nice action beats, wasn’t intolerable, and was only 84 minutes in length. It’d be nice to get theatrical movies like that again.