Image courtesy of www.impawards.com
Director :
David R Ellis
Cast :
Samuel L. Jackson……….Nelville Flynn
Byron Lawson……….Eddie Kim
Nathan Phillips……….Sean Jones
David Koechner……….Rick
Snakes on a Plane has had the most interesting marketing promotion of any film in the last several years. After initially seeming like another throwaway film in the doldrums of August, the film developed a buzz through the power of the internet that spawned parodies and fan-made trailers even before the film’s official theatrical trailer was released. Buzz on the film was so strong that additional shooting in March was added after production had been wrapped up six months earlier; in order to take the film from the “PG-13” rating it had been aiming for to the “R” rating it received, fan’s demands to hear Samuel L. Jackson swear in mass quantities necessitated the changes.
Jackson stars as Nelville Flynn, an FBI agent transporting a witness (Nathan Phillips) on a commercial flight when mob boss Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson) unleashes a truly b-movie level plot upon the passengers and crew of the flight: release several hundred snakes upon the assembled party and hopefully Sean Jones will die. From there it’s the crew and passengers fighting to stay alive against hundreds of poisonous snakes in a film that’s so incredibly ludicrous that it breaks the cycle of awful and turns it into awesome. It’s an outrageous plot to start with, but the key to the film is that it is completely and totally self-aware from the onset. This is a film that knows it’s bad and instead of trying to aim for some sort of brilliance, Snakes on a Plane decides to go another route and just revel in how bad everything is singularly.
It’s not as if the film is acted strongly, written strongly or has some sort of new or witty sense of originality to it. The film’s script has recycled clichés and sequences from the past 20 years and inserted all of them into the film. There isn’t a sense of originality in how the film presents its subject, nor is there anything that isn’t an action film standard in the film. This isn’t a strong script in any sense of the term, as the story on its base is rather flimsy and most of the film violates many tenets of film-making. From children and small animals being bit by the snakes to huge portions of insanely ridiculous dialogue, this is a film that has decided to take everything that is bad about films and just see how awful they can make it to amazing effect. There is a concentrated effort from the creative side of this film to take the sort of typical scenes, like the big speech before the end as well as violating the laws of physics on an insane level, and injects a sort of gleeful enthusiasm into the proceedings that makes it so entertaining to watch. Everything is so over the top bad that it becomes good.
The acting that accompanies the film matches the script as well. While this isn’t an acting film, having a quality cast on board that realizes this movie is awful on a number of levels and yet is treating the material as if it were Shakespeare makes it all the better. While a good performance from Jackson is the norm in any movie, as he rarely has an off day, but Jackson is so over the top in his mannerisms and acting that it becomes delightful to watch. Jackson typifies the cast; everyone knows this is awful material and just decides that if its going to be bad one might as well go all the way with it.
There are only two reasons to see this film: to see people get bit by snakes and to see how far they’ll take the gimmick. One of the things the film does well, and not because it well because it’s so over the top bad, is the actual snake on human violence. There’s a certain line most film-makers wouldn’t cross in terms of how and where people would get attacked by the snakes. Director David Ellis opts to cross this line and go for broke with his action that it helps keep the film going excellently. Many directors would just settle for bites to the neck and leg, which are pretty common in film, but Ellis has so many bites in so many locations on the human body (many to graphic effect) that it’s refreshing.
| CATEGORY | SCORE |
| STORY | 8 / 10 |
| ACTING | 8 / 10 |
| LOOK/FEEL | 10 / 10 |
| ORIGINALITY | 9 / 10 |
| ENTERTAINMENT VALUE | 10 / 10 |
