Flight A-390: Lost in the Pacific concerns the passengers of the maiden flight of the first super luxury airplane of Oceanic Airlines. CEO Gary Gao (Russell Wong) is flying some VIPs from Rio de Janeiro to Hong Kong to help seal a merger and gain some publicity for his company. The flight runs into a storm, and Gao's insistence on not rerouting causes the plane to get damaged. They're forced to land on an uninhabited island in the middle of nowhere, an island that's rumored to be the home of monsters. When things go wrong, it falls on the plane's chef (Brandon Routh) to lead everyone to safety.
The movie takes a while to get going. It spends its first act introducing a bunch of characters that serve no real narrative purpose beyond later falling victim to the various threats that put the plane in danger. It establishes a bunch of conflicts that don't really matter in the long. It is brought up, for example, that one of the characters is offended by the fact that a white chef is cooking Sichuan cuisine. This doesn't really reveal anything about the characters. It seems that this issue is brought just to pad out the run time.
Because there's precious little incident in this whole film. It spends too much time getting to its threat, and not enough time actually dealing with it. To be fair, keeping the characters from interacting with the threat is actually kind of a good idea, because it looks terrible. The characters say the monster is some sort of mutated cat, which isn't a terrifying idea to begin with. On screen, it looks more like a wet rat. It's supposed to be this really dangerous thing, but the visual doesn't convey anything of the sort.
Through it all, the characters act pretty stupidly. Gao demanding that the plane fly through the storm is probably the biggest bit of idiocy this film displays. The film can't quite decide what to do with this character. There's a hint of a redemption arc that just doesn't play. He really just comes off as a terrible person, which makes it real tough to care about his plight. But it's not even clear if he's meant to be the main character. The movie doesn't even really find a focal point among its unwieldy cast of characters.
It all looks terrible, too. Besides the awful CGI monsters, the sets look really cheap. The camera work is weirdly jumpy. The acting is terrible all across the board. Brandon Routh probably deserves better than this, but the actor doesn't quite acquit himself with his performance. But compared to the rest of the cast, he might as well be Marlon Brando in his prime. To be fair to everyone involved, this script is so bad that it is unlikely that even the real Marlon Brando in his prime could much better.
Flight A-390: Lost in the Pacific feels like one of those intentionally bad science fiction TV movies that have recently come in vogue. The o lyrics difference is that the badness is clearly unintentional. From start to finish, this film displays an ineptitude worthy of genuine derision. One could certainly enjoy this film for its ironic value. It is certainly bad enough to elicit laughter. But even taken on that level, it isn't even outrageous enough to be really worth considering.
My Rating:
