Bullet Points: Drop Zone
Wesley Snipes should totally stay away from planes.
Synopsis: U.S. Marshal Pete Nessip (Wesley Snipes) is undercover onboard an airliner when a highjacking/kidnapping attempt causes his brother to be shot and sucked from the plane, splattering on the ground like a sponge dropped from the Empire State Building. Pete then infiltrates a group of skydiving fanatics to catch the criminals responsible for the death of his brother and who are planning a massive skydiving themed heist of a DEA facility.
- What the hell is Mr. Noodle doing here?: Michael Jeter, famous for playing the guy with a mouse in The Green Mile and for being that really creepy dude on Sesame Street, cannot play a character that isn’t awkward for me to look at. Jeter plays the hacker guy named Earl Leedy who is the reason that the movie exists. It’s his hacker skills that Gary Busey and his crew covet and it’s only after Gary Busey bites his finger off and spits it out on the plane that Wesley Snipes is able to track down the guys and get comfortable enough in a skydiving simulator to not got seen as an undercover U.S. Marshal. It’s the perfect cover!
- Airport Security: Any action movie taking place before 9/11 has a remarkable amount of guns and explosives being snuck onboard airplanes. It’s amazing to think how easy it seems to be to hijack planes in a pre-9/11 world.
- Chompers: I can’t believe this is the first time I’ve seen Gary Busey bites a man’s finger off.
- Back to Back: 1993 and 1994 were two excellent years for action movies and even better for me because it was the years that I fell in love with Yancy Butler. She was the damsel in distress in Hard Target and then the kickass skydiver in Drop Zone. Just please don’t ask me to choose one.
- This ain’t Blade: Wesley Snipes has killed hundreds of vampires in film and is a certified badass in real life. For some reason, I didn’t find his character to be much of a tough guy at all in Drop Zone. In fact, it was a bit of a distraction to me because I was waiting for me to break off a quick roundhouse kick or two and he barely beat anyone up at all. Except for that one guy….
- Skydiving for dummies: Like most action movies, we’re given a montage of Wesley Snipes doing stuff preparing for his great revenge/justice against the Busey crew. Unlike most of the other movies released around this time, though, Snipes doesn’t have a sweet martial arts montage, or even a montage of him working out and slicing shit up with a Samurai sword, instead we’re given a montage of Snipes learning how to skydive. It’s not as fulfilling as watching him break boards or beat up random dudes but it’s fitting considering the subject of the film.
- An action packed finale: Like any action movie worth a damn, Drop Zone concludes with the planned heist getting stopped by Snipes and his crew in the most action packed way possible. Snipes goes at it with Robert LaSardo in a stairwell while Yancy Butler and Claire Stansfield share a fight scene that was my favorite in the entire film. A few shootouts later and we end with Mr. Noodle getting jumped on from 80 stories high. It was a fitting ending to a film that ranks just below Passenger 57 on the Snipes 90’s filmography.
Don’t pull that rip cord until you’ve seen these Bonus Bullet Points:
- Steven Seagal was offered the lead role and a salary of $15 million but he turned it down to reprise his role of Casey Ryback in Under Siege 2.
- The character of Jessie Crossman, played by the lovely Yancy Butler, was written for a man but changed in order to get Ms. Butler’s fine ass in it. The scene where Snipes punches her in the face was almost removed but kept in because Yancy wanted to keep it.
- Yancy Butler is definitely dressed like The Rocketeer! Should that be as big a turn-on to me as it is?
