Bullet Points: Rapid Exchange
It has been said that there is no such thing as the perfect crime.
Rapid Exchange, starring Lance Henriksen and Lorenzo Lamas, more than reinforces that notion…
- Can’t Ketchum: The movie begins with two professional thieves, Ketchum (Lorenzo Lamas, Final Impact) and Brooks (Matt O’Toole, Rage and Honor), as they are preparing to steal a scepter worth millions from a museum. They almost get the job done too… except a SWAT team shows up and interrupts the proceedings… this leads to Ketchum throwing caution to the wind to the wind and the intricate plan to steal the scepter turns turns into a good old fashioned smash and grab. This of course sets off an alarm and the actual police are on the scene in a flash… I say the actual police because something doesn’t seem quite right about the “SWAT team” that interrupted the proceedings. Brooks gets pinched, Ketchum gets out… but the SWAT guys get the scepter.
- Den of Thieves: With his partner in the clink, Ketchum turns to Newcastle (Lance Henriksen), the guy who hired Ketchum and Brooks to steal the scepter. Newcastle agrees to post the hefty bail to get Brooks out. But in order to recoup the $300,000 he spent on bail money, Newcastle agrees to include Ketchum and Brooks in a huge heist that he is planning involving a 747 used by the United States Treasury Department to transport millions of dollars from the United States to Geneva, Switzerland. The guy in charge of this high dollar heist is Daltry (Wayne Pére), a former partner of Brooks. The elaborate plan and the crew of seven thieves are introduced… including Daltry’s sister Sophie (Aviva Gale) who in addition to being a skilled thief is also a contortionist.
- Money Plane: The gist of the plan is that Sophie will stowaway in one of the food carts on the 747 (remember she’s a contortionist) while the rest of the team will charter a jet that will follow the 747. Once both planes are in flight, Sophie will tap into the plane’s computer and force the landing gear down… then 4 of the thieves in the jet (including Daltry, Brooks and Ketchum) will gain access to the 747 by shooting a cable over from their jet to the money plane, zipping across the line and crawling up through one of the openings from the landing gear. Once inside they will bust into the safe, stuff the money into duffel bags and zip back over to their jet… that is as long as everything goes according to plan.
- No Honor Among Thieves: If you’ve ever seen a heist movie before, you know that these best laid plans rarely go off without a hitch… but things are even worse for Ketchum and Brooks when they realize that the greedy bastard Daltry has special plans for them and they aren’t good.
2003’s Rapid Exchange was a definite departure from the work that Lorenzo Lamas was cranking out in the prior decade and his chemistry with Mark O’Toole is one of the bright spots of the movie. But the brightest spot was probably Lance Henriksen, who always adds to any film that he is in.
The low point of the film… the amount of disbelief that Rapid Exchange asks the audience to suspend especially in the latter portions of the film.
The latter portion of one of my reviews is always the Bonus Bullet Points…
- AKA: Rapid Exchange was released as Flight 747 in the UK.
- Master of Disguise: There are two different occasions in Rapid Exchange where Lorenzo Lamas wears some of the most obvious and ridiculous disguises in movie history. In all honesty, Rapid Exchange is worth watching just to see Lorenzo in disguise.
- Directed By: Tripp Reed was the director of Rapid Exchange. Reed would go on to direct the two direct to video Walking Tall movies starring Kevin Sorbo.
