Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

One of the best things about this movie is that it centers around the outbreak of an unknown illness that is suspected to be caused by a virus. So, of course, they get the CDC involved. The great thing is that everyone, including the doctor, refers to it as the Center for Disease Control. Even the woman in the film who is supposed to be from the CDC does not know that it's the CenterS for Disease Control.They couldn't even spring for a real uniform for the Navy officer. He looks like he should be getting your bags out of the back of your taxi or opening a door for you.The acting and the script are horrible. There are a couple of good performances (like that of the actor portraying the pilot), but the only serve to highlight how bad the rest of the performances are. There are many moments of tense confrontation, minus any tension.Low-budget is one thing. That explains the horrible sets and confined feeling of the movie. But surely someone could have made the dialogue more believable.

SPOILERS.Back in the mid-1950s there was "The High and the Mighty." It was a success, so there followed a spate of other airplane disaster movies (eg., "The Crowded Sky."). But you can only have so many engine failures and so many mid-air collisions, I guess, so some other crisis must take place before or after -- or, in this case, while -- the passengers reveal their own mid-air crises to one another. "Zero Hour!" in, what, 1957?, gave us all a dose of food poisoning that killed off all the competent pilots. "Airplane" (1980) sent it up. Then, for some reason, probably the ebola scare, in the 1990s there were several versions of "Outbreaks" and "Carriers."This cheaply made and thoughtless film is the first that I know of to combine some kind of viral outbreak with the traditional mid-air disaster. It's not really worth going into in any detail. The stereotypical characters and conflicts are promptly laid out for us. I more or less gave up after the first hour or so. I guess that's why I couldn't understand how everyone was able to leap to the conclusion that the pathogen was a virus and not, say, a bacterium, or how or why they assumed it was airborne and not in the water or something. Or how it's possible that "red and white blood cells are essentially becoming radioactive isotopes." Not that any of that matters to the viewers who will enjoy this, or to the witless writers either for that matter. The film achieves monuments of implausibility.The mechanism of infection and death isn't any more than a peg to hang a half-baked mystery on, and an excuse for Baldwin to chew out the wanly pretty blonde, Penelope Ann Miller, for which may his soul roast in hell. What is Baldwin doing in this movie anyway? What is he doing in ANY movie? I can grasp Penelope Ann Miller's presence. She's an actress of sorts, and eye candy to boot.There is a guy aboard the plane who is some sort of naval liason with the types who develop biochemical warfare agents. The only reason I can make that statement is that the character announces it out loud. I could never tell from his uniform because wardrobe has been able to supply him with only a generic gabardine and a brass "U.S." badge on each lapel. He has no sign of rank, nor does his uniform give any indication of which branch of the armed forces he's a member of.There's another character aboard the plane who is the stereotyped moron that every catastrophe movie needs. He's as much of the part of the plot as the Chief of Police in the cop/action movie who demands that the rogue cop turn in his badge and his gun for overzealousness or cantankerousness or excessive mopery in office. You can't miss this dilatory jerk. He's only there to shout abuse at everyone, accuse them of incompetence, display his cowardice, and infterfere with everyone's attempt to find a solution to the problem. He drips with sarcasm. He's the guy with the blue shirt and big jaw with a tiny mouth in the middle of it. I'd also mention that he speaks with a Canadian accent but it's hardly worth it since, with the exceptions of maybe Baldwin and Miller, everybody in the movie speaks with a Canadian accent. Not that that's necessarily bad. Canadians are bland and inoffensive. Some of my best friends are Canadians. In fact some of my relatives live in Athabasca, Alberta. They don't own any gold mines or anything, but they do have gallon jars of pickled moose on the pantry shelves. I only hope the Canadians never stop enforcing their anti-litter laws, and I love Moose Head Ale. I've never met a Canadian I didn't like. I've met a few movies I didn't care much for, and this is one of them.

I didn't have much in the way of expectations when I rented this DVD. That was a good thing.The first hour of the movie was fairly interesting. The actors did a good job for the most part with the notable exception of Daniel Baldwin.The script was fairly formulaic as expected but it did a better than average job setting up some of the main characters. Overall I would rate it better than most TV movies but it suffered from a low budget. With better sets and writing it would have rated higher.Spoiler:The major problem I had was with the typical Hollywood techno illiteracy. The explanation of the virus was easily the most absurd thing since China Syndrome. The alleged agent was a DNA that somehow combined with, get this, Tritium. As the DNA replicated the Tritium also allegedly replicated thereby killing the person with radiation. Tritium is a radioactive isotope of Hydrogen- 3 protons 1 neutron.Of course the only way that could occur is if the virus managed what Pons and Fleischer didn't- COLD FUSION. After I got done laughing it was somewhat difficult to get back into the movie.With a decent explanation I would have rated the movie higher. Overall a simple movie that managed to become more than a sum of it's parts. Good for a quick escape without too much thought.

This is the worst movie I have seen in the past year. I rented it on tape and could tell right away it was a for TV production. My expectations lowered, but could not get to the level of this sub-TV-standard slop. The movie was obviously a low budget effort, judging by these examples: an interisland flight in Hawaii only had 20 passengers, the plane only had a flight crew of two, the set for the 737 was a DC-10 set from another movie and only 3 Federal agents became involved in a major medical/air disaster! The number of technical errors were numerous too, such as the one hour and forty minute trans-Pacific flight time from Hawaii to California. The worst part of this movie was the performance by Daniel Baldwin, one of the Baldwin boys. It is obvious why we see less of him than his other brothers. I had a hard time figuring out what the deal was with him making a heart-shaped design with the fingers of his hands across his belly as he walked stiffly around the control room. His overacting outbursts were ridiculous too. Avoid this one. Watch one of the old Airport movies instead.