I didn't mind the rather absurd premise of this film. I didn't let myself get bogged down, worrying about this technical improbablility and that technical improbability. After all, what do I know about airliners and all the techno-geeky stuff? Nothing! So, I just figured that it was all relatively plausable, and left it at that. So I do not think I was being nit-picky in the least.

I liked most of the characters; they were fine. Likeable. Craig Sheffer made a good hero -- he should play such roles more often. Jennifer Beals is lovely and gave a decent performance. The "bad guy" (Jeffrey Nordling) was really good at being evil. Tom Berenger didn't have that exciting of a part (he played the head air traffic controller), but he did very well with what he was given.

Half way through the film, I was thinking, "This really isn't so bad after all. Not great, but typical B-movie stuff." And then something SO dumb, SO implausable happened, that even I, in my forgiving and easy-going mood, thought, "NO WAY." It all kind of fell apart after that for me. The film could never quite recover from such an embarrassingly stupid plot device. And it didn't.

The ending was...bad. Not so much because of the "hero landing the plane" business (we've seen that a million times before and usually accept it) but just because it never could redeem itself after the embarrassingly stupid plot device. Plus, there were portions of the ending were corny, forced -- I cringed in parts. I found myself saying, "This is a BAD movie."

Too bad it started to fall apart like that at the end. The rest of the movie was never going to be considered *good*, but it could have avoided being quite so bad had it not taken that fatally stupid turn near the end.