Terminal Velocity (1994)

For some reason I had this one confused with 1995’s Fair Game…

Watch it for young and funny Charlie Sheen playing the everyday man caught up in spy business.  Watch it for Tony Soprano and Shooter McGavin.  Watch it for a lot of plane and skydiving shots.  Just don’t ask why too many times.  Why did he search her apartment instead of coming back later to try and talk to her roommate?  Why blow your fake death story with a sleazy skydiver?  Why bring him in to do a job you could have done better yourself?  Why did Shooter McGavin come back to the factory in the middle of the night?  Why couldn’t they get in touch with the feds?  What exactly was his plan to board the 747 if they didn’t conveniently open the back door?  What and why will get you nowhere.

It was alright though, in the middle ground of spy movies.  It had decent movie-making and a halfway decent story to tell which definitely puts it above the crappy ones.  It just doesn’t have aspirations to elevate things beyond action movie and sometimes that’s just fine.  It was fun and would have been fun to see in the theater with popcorn and soda.

So keep in mind it’s just 1994.  3-4 years after the Cold War ends and there is already a movie about a heroic KGB agent working on US soil with the full compliance of an American (and American audience) to foil the plans of furloughed KGB agents working with the Russian mafia to steal millions from the Russian government.  The conclusion comes with an awards ceremony in Russia with the significance being that the American carried a chip on his shoulder for years after the US boycotted the 1980 summer games in protest of the Afghanistan invasion by the USSR.  This censure of Cold War shenanigans is indicative of public opinion at the time and represents quite a shift from classic sentiments of the preceding decades.  As the happy couple stroll along with their 3-legged dog in Russia, realize how very, very different things have become, the transition from protests and fiery revolutionary rhetoric of new world order to simple acceptance.

–Kryptosfan