Altitude is a low budget movie from director Alex Merkin that takes itself about as seriously as a SyFy movie of the week. But that is entertaining to some, right? Then again with names like Denise Richards, Dolph Lundgren, Chuck Liddell and Jonathan Lipnicki would you expect anything else?
We open with Richards' character Gretchen Blair, a no nonsense hostage negotiator for the FBI field office in LA, rushing the scene of a hostage situation after her attempts fail to sweet talk the distraught middle-aged gunman. Our lead then gets reprimanded and sent via a flight to DC to report to her new desk job. From there we spend the next hour of the 1:28 minute runtime in a cramped plane. While boarding we meet Terry (Kirk Barker), Gretchen's seat mate, as he attempts to convince her to protect him and his cargo worth millions. He needs protection from his double crossed partners in crime, Sharpe (Dolph Lundgren) and Sadie (Greer Grammar), who just joined him on the plane. Sharpe is the man who can dismantle and reassemble anything and his partner Sadie is the "balls" of the operation. Sadie also happens to be Terry's ex. Still following? Hope so. Well, they have a plan to get their money back and it's going to play out 30,000 feet in the air.
There is a little humor scattered in between shakily shot fist fights and gunfire in severely cramped spaces. But that coupled with the quick runtime makes it difficult to really care about any of the characters or the story in general. I will say that some of the shots were certainly creative given the cramped spaces being worked with, but that was still not enough to hold my attention. I think there might be an audience out there for this but I'll tell you, it certainly wasn't me.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5
