Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Smartlink Slipstream is a retro sci-fi cult classic in my book. It features a very solid performance by Mark Hamil. It's a remarkable effort but it does fall short of achieving it's potential. The plot is a bit simplistic and slow but it's not the snore-fest people some people say it is. Paxton is blast to watch as always. The biggest obstacle this movie faced was it's lack of funding. The world it is sets in is an interesting premise. Decent underutilized cast, Gary Kurtz said in an interview that the script was originally much more violent, but that these violent scenes, which would have made the plot more coherent, were never filmed. The visuals and camera work are not that great, but still manage to do the job.

nebula-37029 Mark Hamill, in this movie, showed that he can play an insane psychopath. Obviously, he has been miscast playing anything else. Bob Peck, who plays the fugitive, puts in an amazing performance. His facial expressions as he learns to have feelings are amazing. This is a strange movie, with a few twists, and the effects are not too good, but the aircraft Mr. Hamill flies is cool.

brando647 When I purchased Mill Creek's 50-movie sci-fi "invasion" box set, there were two movies in the entire bunch for which I was excited. The first was ABRAXAS, GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE and it delivered. The second was a film I was unfamiliar with, SLIPSTREAM, but it featured an all-star cast including Bill Paxton, Mark Hamill, Ben Kingsley, F. Murray Abraham, Bob Peck (better known to just about everyone as Muldoon from JURASSIC PARK), and Robbie Coltrane. The premise sounded fantastic: a near-distant future where the Earth has been ravaged by some sort of disaster and the survivors make their living on a raging system of wind dubbed the "Slipstream". For whatever reason, I imagined outposts and landing platforms mounted far above the ruined Earth with hotshot pilots jetting from one dicey location to another in wicked jet fighters or something. Then I watched it and saw my hopes shatter within minutes of the opening credits. Instead of landing platforms and outposts far above the Earth's surface, we get a system of caves. Instead of wicked jet fighters, we get wimpy little glider planes. And for the record, the slipstream itself is unimpressive and plays little part in the movie other than to explain why all the main characters get around via little planes. Bill Paxton is our main character, Matt Owens. Matt owns his own little glider plane and makes his living doing whatever odd jobs he can find. He crosses paths with two psychotic law enforcement officers (Mark Hamill and Kitty Aldridge) who are bringing a prisoner (Bob Peck) in to face punishment for murder. Matt steals the prisoner and sets off in hopes of turning him in for a hefty reward, but he quickly learns there's more to this polite murderer in a business suit than it seems.It becomes blatantly obvious at a point that this movie was made because someone on the filmmaking team found these homes built into the rock faces of Cappadoccia, Turkey and thought, "Hey, that would be a cool location for a movie. What else have we got?" Then someone else was like, "Tiny planes?" And thus SLIPSTREAM was born. Or maybe screenwriter Tony Kayden turned in a draft for the script that was way cooler and might've been closer to my expectations if executed properly, but instead the producers shot him down. Nope, rocks and planes. I probably would've even been all right with rocks and planes if the story wasn't so simple, boring, and stupid. The longer I watched this movie, the sadder it made me. Yeah, it was miserably upsetting seeing that the movie was the polar opposite of what I had expected on a visual level but, the further I got into the movie, the more it made me cringe in pain. Bob Peck's character, dubbed Byron by Paxton's character, is too whimsical to ever come across as threatening. I was hoping for action and adventure but instead we're treated to Byron musing about what it must be like to sleep and dream. The murder he's accused (and admitted) to committing might have been explained at some point but I missed it. I got the impression it involved mutual consent but I'm not going to watch this again to find out. Byron's got magic healing powers that he uses once or twice that are never explained and I'm not even sure they were addressed again. He's a main character in this movie and he's nothing more than a goofy enigma I've got no interest in solving. He gets a dance number too. That's right, a smegging dance number.With the innocent aloofness of Byron's character alone, I felt SLIPSTREAM starting to dip into children's movie territory. But is it a children's movie? It's rated PG-13 so I guess it's a possibility. The writing is too simple and cheesy to really appeal to mature minds. Most characters in SLIPSTREAM are just archetypes without any sort of real personality to give them dimension. Bill Paxton's Matt is a hot shot whose over- confidence exceeds his actual skills and his eventual priority shift is telegraphed from the moment he and Byron meet. Mark Hamill is absolutely wasted as the main villain Tasker. He apparently received no instruction other than to sneer and make snide remarks, and we learn nothing about whatever agency he claims to work with other than the fact that their totally cool with killing innocents to achieve their goal of… arresting a murderer? Kitty Aldridge is Tasker's partner Belitski and she exists only to give Matt someone to drool over between escapes. Robbie Coltrane and F. Murray Abraham amount to nothing more than cameos and, after having watched this movie twice, I still haven't spotted Ben Kingsley in there. I assume it's because I can't help but mentally check out about halfway through. I'm sorry but SLIPSTREAM just fails on pretty much all levels. The science fiction premise is wasted. The acting is corny and the writing is simplistic and predictable. The cast is given nothing of substance to work with and I don't care how much aerial plane footage they bother to shove in because it never looks cool. Well, all right, I'll admit Tasker's plane was sort of cool. So there you go folks. You can skip SLIPSTREAM unless you really want to see evil Luke Skywalker hunt a sedated Muldoon across Turkey in a semi-cool-looking glider plane.

Zuckervati The story and the characters really REALLY needed work. The world idea is kind of neat, but no one bothered to develop any of it either through exposition, or through the plot. Despite the cheesy notes at the beginning of the film, it makes sense that you wouldn't use exposition, since no one is new to this world. And yet, when Matt Owens (Bill Paxton) and Byron (Bob Peck) stray off-course and get lost, and get introduced to the wind-worshipers and the fat, lazy, rich people in the museum, we don't get any real idea of who these people are, or why we should care about any of them. Smart films have ways of developing this simply by having the characters live in the world. Simple things, like ordering a drink at a bar, or talking about something in the past -- these are the kind of things that make the film world memorable, not endless shots of crappy planes, and cheap CG effects of someone trying to do loops in an ultralight.If this is too difficult for you, here's a little tip -- pare down the multiple locations. If everything's becoming disjointed because you're pulling up to often, stay in one place for a little while and have the characters talk a little. All the superfluous crap should be removed. Get rid of the entire wind-worshipers scene. Get rid of the stuffy museum people. Get rid of all the crappy flying crap unless you can make the wind relevant to the story. Have the entire thing set on a big plane, or something. Just get people talking about something we care about.Hey, get rid of Bill Paxton. Have the film center around Tasker's character and his relationship with the robot, Byron.Indeed, the biggest problem of the film is that we don't care anything about anybody, because no one takes the time to either explain their motivations or delve into their characters. We don't like Matt (well, because he's played by Bill Paxton, among other things). He's a scoundrel, who doesn't redeem himself enough, except to let the android, Byron, go. And this action has even less meaning than most because of three key points: 1. Byron is a murderer. 2. Byron is indestructible 3. Byron can leave any time he damn well pleases.We try to like Byron, because there's a kind of pathos there, but it's largely undeveloped. All we're left with is a whiny, glassy-eyed robot guy who's acting is subdued and wooden one moment, and practically zany the next. We don't know why or how he develops emotions, but we do know for a fact that he's murdered someone. We don't know why he murdered someone, or the circumstances of this grisly event, because it isn't developed. We can't feel pity for him if we don't know the story. All we know for a fact is that he murders people. And he likes Bill Paxton.We don't hate Tasker enough (partly because he's played by good-guy Mark Hamill), since while gruff and ruthless, doesn't do anything out of the ordinary for his character -- a post-apocalyptic peace officer. Sure he kills Montclaire (Robbie Coltrane) and his team, but they are drug dealers, on their way to grow poppies for heroin. And they shoot at him first. He doesn't kill anyone who doesn't get in the way, or who does not try to physically harm him first. That goes equally well for the final confrontation in the museum. He uses a smidge of police brutality against a lazy dilettante (F. Murray Abraham is wasted in this role), and everyone else draws a gun on him.I really don't understand what's the deal with Belitski (Kitty Aldridge), Tasker's partner. After only an accumulated 10 minutes with Matt, she's ready to switch sides, despite her shouts of loyalty, and despite Matt's trash-talking her, and punching her out. If that's love, then I'll choose hate any day.Really. Paxton's character is about as lovable as Simon in "True Lies", or Pvt. Hudson from "Aliens". Does anyone fall for him in these movies? No. Why? Because he's a loud-mouthed idiot, and a loser. Why put him at the helm of this film?