If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you strap an entire B‑movie budget to a shaky cam and christen it with Ice‑T’s name—then promptly hand the lead role to someone who isn’t him—congratulations: you’ve discovered 2001’s airborne atrocity Air Rage (or, as I like to call it, “Fly‑Hard But Wrong”). It’s exactly the kind of gleefully clueless cheese you’d expect from a Fred Olen Ray slash Jim Wynorski double feature, and that’s precisely why you’ll fall in love with its every misguided moment.
From the opening explosions in a different movie—where our villain dreams of explosions in HIS movie—to the big reveal that Ice‑T only pops up about 45 minutes into the movie (playing a black ops infiltrator with the emotional range of a traffic cone), the movie instantly subverts expectations. You think you’re signing up for a hardcore, Ice‑T‑led thriller? Nope. Our real hero is...someone else (no spoilers).
Plot? It’s basically “terrorists on a plane” meets “hey, why not throw in a top secret CD-ROM just for kicks?” And of course the whole scheme unravels thanks to dialogue so cheesily literal (“You're one dumb SOB, Sykes.” Sykes: "Yeah I know.") that you’ll swear the screenwriters were scribbling in crayon. The action scenes bounce along with the grace of a kangaroo on Red Bull: fists connect both when they should and should not, explosions happen in the background just to remind you they owned the footage, and the stunts range from “did they even plan that?” to “wait, a plane tube?”
But the pièce de résistance is the physics—or, more accurately, the complete absence thereof. Gravity politely excuses itself for the runtime. Bullets seem to curve around heads. Planes nosedive, bank, and somehow still manage to land on runway-sized targets with millimeter precision. It’s like someone chucked Newton’s laws out the emergency exit hatch and never looked back.
All of this adds up to a riotous, unintentional joyride. If you’re a fan of Fred Olen Ray’s gleeful disregard for coherence or Jim Wynorski’s unapologetic embrace of “that’ll do” effects, Air Rage is your new cult classic. Bad? Oh, undeniably. But in the grand tradition of so‑bad‑it’s‑good cinema, it’s a glorious, gloriously dumb flight you won’t regret taking.
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