Zheng Fa Tai Ping Yang |
China / USA • 2016 • 89m •
  • Directed by: Vincent Zhou. • Starring: Brandon Routh, Yuqi Zhang, Russell Wong, Bernice Liu, Mengjie Jiang, Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau, Vincent M. Ward, Tazito Garcia, Sunny Wang, Xiangyu Dai, Natasha Lloyd, Tim Parrish, Bobby Tonelli. • Music by: Alec Puro.  The inaugural flight of a luxurious new commercial aircraft, filled with elite passengers, is forced to make an emergency landing on a seemingly deserted island after encountering a tremendous storm while crossing the Pacific Ocean. On the island the passengers and crew encounter unspeakable terror and only some narrowly escape. The mysterious emergence of two gunmen, who know more than what they reveal, joins the fate of the flight with a lone aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean. Who will survive and who will be forever lost in the Pacific?
|
Trailers:
| Length: | Languages: | Subtitles: |
Review:
Large plot holes, black hole-sized. Why would you wander off a plane on an island supposedly rumored to have monsters? Why would you not go back to the plane when you see dead bodies? There was a guy looking down on the captain of the plane the entire time they were on the island, from the bottom hatch, and he didn't see a yowling, red-eyed monster come and rip the captain's heart out?!? No, he only notices when the CNN cameraman (yes, apparently the film crew was 'CNN') gets ripped apart, 50 feet away out of his view, after the said-cameraman saw the creature and decided to stick his face into the bushes.
There's another scene where a scientist is dying in the middle of a hallway, and after one of the "U.N" mercenaries (again...a little blatant with the hate here) talks to him for about 5 minutes, he's still not dead. Brandon Routh has to go through about 15 minutes of film time before he goes to follow the mercenary, and the scientist STILL ISN'T DEAD. Really?!?! He got bit by one of those cats, the same cats that have toxins and apparently puts you in an incredible amount of pain as you die, and he's still not dead.
Moving on to actors, there's a great deal of cardboard, stiff acting that I'm not even sure if it's entirely the actorsactress' faults. The directing and writing put them in really awkward moments and conversations that didn't make sense. ("In my country, if a woman pulls a gun on you, you should marry her." "Really? I'm from China, and I always get the last word." I'm sorry, but what??? No logic in the first line, and the reply is - I always get the last word???) I feel the sorriest for Brandon Routh, who I've seen in Superman and Dylan Dog, and he's not a bad actor! This film ruins him, and you don't even see him in the first 30 minutes of the movie.
They even had to use English dubbing for some of the Chinese actorsactresses, which would've been all right marginally, if they had used voice actors that actually matched them! The third-in-line co-pilot's dubbing was probably the worst, because his voice was pretty much a direct copy of the captain's voice, at maybe half-an-octave lower. The lipsynching was also pretty awful on the CNN reporter.
Sometimes, the acting got better - and I noticed that it was when the Chinese actors switched back to speaking Chinese. They loosened up, got natural, and their body language matched the cadence of their dialogue. The reporter especially improved when she was able to speak in her own language, and didn't have to resort to mouthing English. Again, going back to Brandon Routh, he was probably the only decent AmericanCaucasianEnglish-speaking actor out of the bunch, but when he had to play an American chef that cooked Chinese food, even the film had to stop and take a moment to point out that - hey, you're not Chinese, da fuq?
I think even the actors and actresses were getting sick of the whole movie. At the beginning, they just didn't look like they were having fun. By the end, when they were all packed in that tiny helicopter while Brandon Routh decided to hang out on the outside of it, for whatever reason, that's the only time smiles were seen. Like, real, genuine smiles. "AT LAST, AT LAST, FREEDOM AT LAST!"-type of joy, right there.
What else...the CGI is bad. The plane was all right, except for the choice of putting the jet engines smushed between the plane wings. But the cats. THE CATS. The main creature feature of the film, and they were awful. They looked like mutant rats more than cats. Add in the fact that Fortune Island was CGI, the militaryscience base was CGI, the OCEAN was CGI...ughhhhhhhh. And the real-life sets were just as horrible. Sometimes, it looked like it was made for those live-action kid shows, with simple walls and tacky colors.
The list of bad decisions made by the director and camera crew don't stop there, but the rest are sort of just little details that are nitpicking. Recoil on guns, not there. Sound of gunfire not syncing with actual visual gun flashes. A blind man being able to run around without a walking stick. An airplane pilot being able to pilot a helicopter with no explanation other than "yeah, anything with propellers". Saying they have an antidote, but deciding to shoot the infected person anyway. A pop-song playing as they escape into the sunset, despite a major military base exploding. A helicopter that looks like the local weather helicopter, except it has guns that pop out underneath??? A song literally soothes the savage beast, and it is used over and over again, despite the violinist and singer of the group supposedly being experienced professionals. Guns being shot on an airplane, and it doesn't de-pressurize the plane. Letting the ROOKIE guide a commercial, luxury-line airplane onto a carrier ship that is meant for JETS, NOT PLANES. A firehose becoming a flamethrower - and do NOT tell me that thing was meant for fuel, because the whole complex and carrier ship would've exploded the minute he lit that thing on fire.
Just...sighs...this is that movie that you take your friends to, just to watch them squirm in discomfort like nails on a chalkboard. Or you dared them to, knowing they were going to hate it. I know this review was all over the place, but just take my word when I say - DON'T WATCH THIS GARBAGE.
Review by SKI from the Internet Movie Database.
Off-Site Reviews:
Movie Database