Note: The following was written in August of 2006, nearly a year ago. I found it on my flash drive last night and had completely forgotten about it. For the sake of content, here is my ancient review of Snakes on a Plane, edited for quality:
Snakes on a Plane (2006) (***)
A review by [Quad9damage]
Snakes on a Plane is a great example of honest filmmaking. If the studio had been the least bit sincere about what it was presenting, the movie would have been a disaster. Snakes on a Plane may occasionally pretend to be serious, but in its heart it always knows what it is.
The movie’s central theme is obvious. No metaphors are being used here; the words ‘snakes’ and ‘plane’ are to be taken literally. Snakes aren’t supposed to be on planes, yet here they are. And there is your plot.
The story opens with an extreme sports enthusiast (Sean Jones) witnessing a vengeful mob boss murdering a prosecutor. He is spotted and a hit is placed on him. Eventually he is tracked down at his apartment and would be backed into a corner, if it weren’t for Super FBI Agent Samuel L. Jackson. He quickly dispatches the assassins with well-placed gun fire and drags Jones down to the police station. Since Jones was the only witness to the murder, he will be the most important element in the mob boss’s trial. He is coerced into taking a red-eye flight to L.A.
How did Jackson know who the witness was, or even where to find him? That’s an easy one: Jones left behind an empty can of Red Bull that had his fingerprints all over it. This is the third example of rapid-fire product placement spotted within the first ten minutes.
But who cares about any of that? The audience knows what they came to see, and the movie wastes no time getting down to its titular element. Oh, there’s the obligatory introduction of characters— so brief that we don’t learn much about them— then it’s down to business. Under ordinary circumstances (to use the term loosely), snakes on a plane probably wouldn’t be that big of a deal, as long as everybody remained calm and kept their feet up. However, these are murderous snakes, driven wild by a pheromone and released from captivity when a timer ominously counts down to zero. Their only objective is to bite to vicious death any human or animal unlucky enough to be in their line of sight.
These kinds of snakes can (and do) cause an exhausting number of problems. They chew through cables, eat pets, and kill those responsible for safely landing the aircraft. In the passenger area, they leave trails of swollen bodies to step over and lots of wreckage to stumble through. The movie is split into a series of interconnected episodes, all dealing with a new catastrophe that the nefarious reptiles have sparked. In almost every one, a plot thread is introduced that goes absolutely nowhere.
For a movie that’s stupid on purpose, there is a surprising amount of disturbing imagery. People die, but a lot of them end up dying in ways that are excessively gruesome. Although we are dealing with hundreds of deadly snakes released in a closed area, the amount of gore and agony doesn’t match up to how the rest of the package is presented.
I won’t reveal the ending, but don’t expect anything other than some major deus ex machina. Before that, Samuel L. Jackson quips a particular line that had the audience clapping and cheering. I will not spoil that, either, but you’ve probably read it on the Internet dozens of times by now. It’s to be expected from a somewhat typecast actor placed in this situation.
Is Snakes on a Plane a bad movie? Yes, it is. Is it worth seeing? Definitely. Normally, I’d tear a film such as this one to bloody shreds; in this case, to do so would be missing the point. I give it three stars, not for being mindless fluff, but for having the courage to say that it is.
