by Louis Williams

Created on: October 07, 2010

Snakes on a Plane

The title sounds like something one might find in Tender Buttons; here, however, the snakes are real.

Surfer dude in Hawaii rides bike over back roads right into a mob killing. He is the only eye witness and is spotted by the Bads, who set out to kill him. By the time he gets back to Honolulu, he finds Bads knocking at his door and an FBI heavy hitter, played by Samuel L. Jackson, already in his apartment as protection. What Jackson wants is for Dude to go back to L. A. and testify against the head Bad, the man he saw demolish another man with a baseball bat. Then the Dude can go on to Bali and surf.

The plane to L. A., however, has been booby trapped by the Bads, who’ve filled it with a shipment of hundreds of poisonous snakes, their cages timed to open in mid-flight, Jackson and the Dude the ultimate targets. The main thing, however, is simply to cause the plane to crash into the ocean, where the evidence would be minimal.

In other words, we have a variation on a formula that stretches back at least to The High and The Mighty, in this case following the same flight plan, Honolulu to L. A. And since you have a formula, you have clichés. You have dozens of them: the cross-section list of passengers; the lightning character sketches before the trouble starts; the honeymooning couple; the horse’s ass; the celebrity, here a rock star; the mother with a baby; the children travelling alone; the joint smoking, thong wearing couple; the elderly flight attendent on her last tour of duty; the valiant younger flight attendent; the goofball captain (who turns out all right in the end). Lots of people turn out all right, in fact, so many that this film should really have been a movie of the week shown on TV.

When the snakes get loose and passengers begin to die, who dies first? The pot smoking couple, who have commandeered a restroom to enjoy their joint and one another. 1) They fornicate; 2) they smoke a controlled substance; and 3) they destroy the restroom smoke detector, the resulting hole in the ceiling a portal for the snakes who drip down and start biting. In other words, the first to die deserve to die for violating family values. What I’m saying is that there is a rather smug tone to much of this, since the prideful get the snakes and die. The valiant, those who do for others, tend to survive, though you would think that their odds were no greater in this situation than those of the transgressors.

There are, of course, possibilities for conversion: the rock star, for instance, who starts out snippy and vain, winds up actually caring about and for his fellow passengers.

Everything happens that you would expect. The plane, for instance, is landed by someone whose entire aeronautic training comes from a flight simulator; the plane, earler, nearly crashes into the ocean, but is rescued by the snakebitten remaining pilot who hauls himself up from a lower compartment, takes the controls, and flies one-handed—this another case of conversion, since this pilot was seen earlier as a sexist pig.

Otherwise there is a lot of screaming, mini-dramas in almost every seat, missing infants blessedly found, self-sacrifice, and enough treacle to smooth the plane’s landing, if applied.

Still, the movie has a certain zany vitality, with Jackson eternally cool and in command and the rest—those with the Right Stuff, that is—following his lead. There is even a deal of interracial sexual interest—not, mind you shown on screen, but in prospect at the end—when Jackson invites the plucky flight attendant to dinner. A chance for one more snake to make its moves? It does seem possible.

Pretty bad, all told, but not totally so.

Learn more about this author, Louis Williams.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.