a5c7b9f00b A maverick skydiver and a former KGB agent team up to stop the Russian mafia from stealing gold. Ditch Brodie is a maverick skydiving instructor. One day, a beautiful girl comes in, wanting to take her first jump. Up in the air, Ditch takes his eyes off her momentarily, then looks back to find out that she has fallen out, dying on impact. Ditch is suspicious that all is notit seems, because he distinctly remembers hooking her static line on… This is one of the memorable flicks of the 1990s. Of course not in the same shelf that has (Con Air), (The Rock), (Face Off), but you may find it at the lower one, and when you check it out you&#39;ll be surprised. The Action is super but not that totally crazysome likes from the same era. True that the ultimate tagline of all of this kind of movies is &quot;don&#39;t you ever think&quot; but here even if you did, you&#39;d see how it got a little bit of inner logic. You&#39;ve got to love and respect that script, it did it well. The climax&#39;s sequence was so tough a&#39; la James Bond grand style. Thanks to director (Deran Sarafian) who presented also (Gunmen - 1994) another good Action. The only problem, a big one too, is (Charlie Sheen) ! Actually with a movie like that you&#39;d think young (Clint Eastwood), or (Willis), or even (Sly), but not Mr. shining black hair who can&#39;t act well. His charisma is weaker than the role. He&#39;s funny for sometimes but silly frigid for most of the time. Still good noise though, and definitely the most amusing among the series of the unfortunate events that (Sheen) did it during the 1990s (The Arrival, Postmortem, Free Money, No Code of Conduct, ..etc) before his merciful retirement from cinema (temporarily or eternally I think the cinema retired from him !) to establish a TV career with (2 Men &amp; Half) which&#39;s another flop if you asked me. So (Terminal Velocity) compared to (Sheen)&#39;s original disasters is like paradise, but he still in it. I said once that the main defect, sometimes the only defect, with movies by (Tom Cruise), (Ben Affleck) or (Charlie Sheen) is that they&#39;re their leads ! Charlie Sheen stars&quot;Ditch&quot; Brodie, a daredevil and skydiving instructor whose latest student is the eager Chris Morrow (Nastassja Kinski). He&#39;s horrified when she seems to perish on her very first jump, and he&#39;s soon plunged into international intrigue. Proving that he wasn&#39;t neglectful and that he didn&#39;t let her die will not be his main worry. He will have to dodge attempts on his life by crazed goons who are former members of the KGB.<br/><br/>The screenplay by David Twohy (future director of such thingsthe &quot;Riddick&quot; film series) is patently ridiculous. You have to shake your head and laugh, but the good thing is that Twohy and director Deran Sarafian (&quot;Death Warrant&quot;) are clearly never taking themselves 100% seriously to begin with. It&#39;s too bad that Sarafian, the son of cult filmmaker Richard Sarafian (&quot;Vanishing Point&quot;), didn&#39;t enjoy more commercial success in Hollywood, because here he proved that he had the chops to handle a mainstream action thriller. The airborne stunts and various set pieces are quite fun, and there&#39;s always plenty of gunfire and explosions to ensure that attention spans are maintained.<br/><br/>Sheen is decent enoughour hero, a more or less average Joe obliged to help save the day. Part of whatever strength the movie has, though, rests on Kinskis&#39; capable shoulders. She really gives it her all. (And, of course, looks very sexy throughout.) James Gandolfini has an early role here, showing off that screen presence that helped the late actor to become a star a few years later. Christopher McDonald is funa psycho villain, although he does admittedly look rather silly with that bleached blonde hair. It&#39;s also nice to see Melvin Van Peebles and Rance Howard in small roles. Margaret Colin appears unbilledJo.<br/><br/>This is the kind of thing that does entertain the viewer provided they don&#39;t want to think about it too much. It&#39;s basically B fare with an A level budget.<br/><br/>Seven out of 10.
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