TURBULENCE

Starring Ray Liotta and Lauren Holly Directed by Robert Butler Rated R, with violence and profanity; running time 103 minutes With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a 7

(Jan. 9, 1997) -- So, you've had enough of the highfalutin end-of-the-year prestige pictures and the sentimental holiday stuff. You think it's time for the movies to get crackin' again.

Well, grab your popcorn and check out Turbulence, the new airliner thriller with Ray Liotta and Lauren Holly. Less than two weeks into 1997, the year's first big action flick is crash-landing at the multiplex.

Liotta stars as Ryan Weaver, a convicted killer, being transported by marshals on board a nearly deserted Christmas Eve flight from New York to Los Angeles. Holly plays Teri Halloran, a spunky stewardess who must eventually do much more than serve peanuts and soft drinks. Ultimately, she becomes the first movie stewardess forced to pilot a plane since a hysterical Karen Black took the controls in Airport 1975.

In Turbulence, veteran director Robert Butler tweaks two tired and predictable Hollywood formulas -- the airplane disaster flick and the psycho-on-the-loose fright movie. He comes up with a romp that's full of action and energy and, yes, quite a bit of baloney.

Leaning heavily on special effects, the film takes you for a VERY bumpy ride. You'll join Liotta and Holly as the plane twirls and flips through an immense storm. At one point, the plane skims the top of a high-rise hotel and snags a car on its landing gear from the roof of a parking garage. When was the last time you saw an airplane that may not be able to land because of a car that's stuck on its wheel assembly?

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Before Turbulence becomes an Airport clone, it retreads the psycho-slasher genre. When the shackled Ryan is led onto the airliner, he's accompanied by another prisoner and four marshals. Once the plane is airborne, the other prisoner briefly escapes, triggering a gun battle that leaves him and the marshals -- and the pilot and co-pilot -- all dead.

Now free, Ryan locks the remaining crew members and passengers in a crew cabin, and becomes the warped master of his domain. He sings demented songs, pours himself all the free booze he wants and stalks the one remaining person in his end of the plane -- stewardess Teri Halloran.

Halloran, though, has other problems. After tumbling through the pitching and swirling cabin with the killer in pursuit, she has finally locked herself in the cockpit, where she is shocked to discover she's alone. No one is flying the plane!

On her side of the door are two empty pilot seats. On the other side of the door is a murdering psycho. And all around the Boeing 747 is raging a thunderstorm. Turbulence, indeed.

There's so much craziness -- and lack of subtlety -- in Turbulence that it also helps if filmgoers apply a sense of humor. Like most action flicks, it has been constructed like an amusement park ride, with ever-increasing peaks and valleys, designed to leave you breathless. And laughing. (This is no movie to be taken seriously.)

As Ryan Weaver, Liotta blends the same sort of deceptive charm and demonic rage he previously employed as dark characters in Unlawful Entry and Something Wild. He has been down this road before; he knows the territory.

More impressive is Lauren Holly as the besieged stewardess, Teri Halloran. Asked for the first time to help carry a film, Holly responds as an action-movie heroine of surprising resourcefulness. Her Teri is a strong-willed sister to Sandra Bullock's bus driver in Speed and Linda Hamilton's tough-as-nails mother in Terminator 2.

So check your brain at the entryway, climb aboard, fasten your seat belt and prepare to gasp and giggle.