In the near future, where Earth has been devastated by man's pollution and giant winds rule the planet, bounty hunter Matt kidnaps a murderer out of the hands of two police officers, planning to get the bounty himself.
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Reviews
I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes
In the future nature rebels against man and creates a new world of few people with most living a "Mad Max" world. A strange man in a suit (Bob Peck) is captured by law enforcement agents (Mark Hamill and Kitty Aldridge). Before he can be returned, a bounty hunter (Bill Paxton) kidnaps the man so he can get the bounty. They are pursued through villages traveling by air.As time goes on we learn more about this strange man and why he is so important.This film has quite the cast, which includes small roles by Ben Kinsley, Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) and F. Abraham Murray. In spite of the all-star cast and interesting subject matter, the poor transfer to DVD coupled with an ending that seemed to drag on made watching tedious after a while.Parental Guide: No f-bombs, but adult language. Near sex scenes, groping. Brief nudity (?) at a distance.Available on several multi-film sci-fi collections.
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.
I remember being all jazzed about this film coming out because it had Luke Skywalker in it as a bad guy, then have a vague memory of watching it but having no recollection if it was any good or not. Seeing it now, almost one hundred years later, I can see why I can't remember much about it. It's not a bad film as such, but there's not too much going on.The premise is good though. This film was made in the eighties so there's a post-apocalyptic setting, but this is also the late eighties so we've got an environmental post-apocalyptic vibe going on where mankind's treating of the world has come back to bite them, with huge environmental changes resulting in a huge valley running for thousands of miles across the land, which has this constant wind blowing through it like Earth is letting out one continuous never ending fart that people live in.One of those folks living in the fart is Bill Paxton, some kind of salvage tradesman who gets caught up with Mark Hamill, a policeman escorting murderer Bob Peck. Paxton sees dollar signs (or whatever currency they have in this world) as Peck comes with a mighty large bounty on his head. So Paxton steals him and they off into the possibly eggy fart of the Slipstream.It's like one of those buddy movies only with a lot of wind involved. Bizarrely, and I'm not sure if I'm right or not, but a lot of the violence seems to have been trimmed or not filmed at all. Just check out the shootout in the woods where a couple of shots are fired and then we abruptly cut to Mark Hammil burying the bodies. Same goes for when he and his sidekick launch an assault on the bunker where F. Murray Abraham is living. Maybe this was intentional and the film does have a lighthearted tone about it. Who knows? On the plus side, we do have a great performance from Bob Peck (the best thing about Jurassic Park too) as the android whose not quite sure what to make of having freedom. He just seems to tower above the rest of the actors here. Ben Kingsley also appears in a fairly pointless cameo. So does Robbie Coltrane but then he's got a cameo in every British film made in the eighties.So, it's a weirdly disjointed but well meaning mess with some great actors involved. And Bill Paxton. It's in the public domain as well so if you're curious it isn't going to cost you anything to see it.
Compared with todays frenetic, kinetic, fast cutting, CGI laden crap this actually holds up fairly well. I liked the actors, I liked the characters (each with a clear motivation) and I liked the settings. It was well shot, well edited and well written. And you know what, the story held my interest. Not like a lot of what I see today (story often gets lost over a 'great shot' or pointless effect). Yes, the special fx are very 80's with some matte lines but I am very forgiving about that, this film is over 20 years old after all. Like the original Star Wars Trilogy (before George tinkered with it again, and again, and again), this film is best enjoyed with all it's flaws. A simple film, well told story and great characters. A really good family film.