Too much of everything

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Blistering performances.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Excellent action movie with an original plot. I've never seen a plot like this where money is stolen in midair and the good guys come out on top. The musical score was outstanding and helped move the movie along at a real good pace, especially during the action sequences. The locations sequences where different too, I believe most of the film was filmed in Europe. I would enjoy seeing another movie of this type with the same actors and actress. The movie moved along at a good pace and was never boring. Maybe some of the interior sets were a little bit of a stretch for the imagination being inside an aircraft, but I felt overall they fit appropriately into the movie.

I found this to be a watchable all be it very predictable movie. There was some good stunt work that gave a fair degree of excitement and suspense to the story. One did however have to suspend ones credulity on a number of occasions for the plot to work. For example despite losing their transfer cable, couplings and harness when the pilot retracted the undercarriage manually, they fortunately found a spare on-board the aircraft complete with Caribbeans. According to the plot drilling a hole in the ceiling of the vault would disable the alarm system in the vault when the system was reactivated (I can't think why), according to Daltry there battery operated drill would be unable to drill through the vault ceiling however they just happened to have a hydraulic drill complete with hoses and fittings to fit the equally convenient take off points in the planes hydraulic system located above the vault. As the plane has a closed hydraulic system it is hard to see how this could be accomplished without affecting the control systems or at least setting hydraulic pressure alarms in the cockpit. Accepting this for the sake of the plot it takes them several minutes to drill a small hole through the top of the vault (tension will they be able to drill through before FED's get there to check the false alarm), yet from the time the vault door closed and before the FED's had walked the few feet to the second security door they had cut a squire hole in the roof of the vault big enough for them to get through. One can accept all theses and other inconsistencies for the sake of a good yarn, however what spoiled the movie for me was when what appears to have been an effort by the script writers to discuses what up to that point was a fairly predictable ending, they killed off the two hero's (If one can refer to crocks as hero's) Ketchum & Brooks one was shot and thrown out of a 747 at 10,000 feet the other wiliest sliding down the cable between the two planes the villain Daltry with one hand manages to unhook the cable carrying the weight of a full grown man with the air pressure of several hundred miles per hour pressing on him, and letting him fall to his death. And yet in the next sequence these two without any kind of explanation (however tenuous or implausible) have miraculously survived the full from 10.000 feet and had time to set up an elaborate scam to get the money. The only comment on there survival was to Sophie that her brother is a bad shot. Don't expect an Oscar nomination for this one.

Newcastle wants a $9 million Scottish scepter, and Ketchum, Brooks and others use their special skills to try to get their hands on it. Then a SWAT team shows up (at least that's what their uniforms say). Can they still succeed? Regardless, Newcastle has an even better opportunity for which Daltry (an annoying jerk, plus other names probably inappropriate here) is put in charge. Syrians have been printing counterfeit money--so much that new plates were made necessary. Hundreds of millions of dollars in new cash must be shipped by 747.Daltry, Ketchum and Brooks are joined by Sophie, who is pretty, smart, confident, physically strong and quite flexible. As in the first operation, their team includes scientific types (not really geeks) who can hack into computer systems and get into places they are not supposed to be.This operation should not be too much of a challenge because the people guarding the money do not seem all that competent, though the plane's pilots appear quite intelligent (if this is realistic, pilots have to know A LOT these days). Matthewson is an obnoxious trivia expert who seems to be too much of a coward to be on a plane, and he comes across as a bumbling idiot. His female partner may be smarter, but not by much. The uniformed guards aren't exactly rushing into action when the situation looks suspicious.This film reminds me of "Ocean's Eleven" (which was a much better movie because of its stars and their performances), as well as "Sneakers" (which had stars and much more humor). The viewer wants the crooks to succeed.A lot of work appears to have gone into making the computers and equipment look realistic, as well as the characters' knowledge about what to do. The stunt work looked good, and the military-style rappelling and climbing competently executed.Now the planes looked like models, even on a 13-inch TV. This wasn't too much of a distraction because the excitement level stayed high much of the time.Normally for me to get interested in this type of movie I need to see familiar stars. I didn't know any actors' names except Lorenzo Lamas (and I'm not even really familiar with him). He is at least good-looking, which should attract at least a few gals (who might also enjoy seeing Sophie as a strong, capable woman).There wasn't a lot of humor, but this film was occasionally funny. The violence was not excessive. I did hear the sound go out a number of times, but it appeared to me that the f-word was being used in a lot of those situations.It was pretty good if you're not expecting a whole lot.

The only reason any of the hundred or so users watched this movie was because they belong to the crew, were friends to the crew, or were obsessive fans of either Lance Henriksen or Lorenzo Lamas. I personally follow the "cult of Lance", so I was disappointed to see that despite being the headliner, it's in name only. Playing rich criminal Newcastle, Lance is a joy to watch but all of his screen time is relegated to the beginning of the movie. Newcastle sets up a 747 heist which includes Ketchum (Lamas) and a bunch of forgettable characters. The biggest shock to this viewer was that the pre-heist scenes were not all that bad. With the exception of somewhat obnoxious and rather confused looking Aviva Gale, who times every line with the finesse of a grade school play actress, acting was decent all around, and none of the lines really made me cringe.But once the heist occurs, the movie falls asleep. Not only is their plan the most ridiculous thing ever captured on film, but it's dragged out for far too long. This isn't a very deep movie, and you have to fill out your 90 minutes, but these scenes are so boring I nearly nodded off at two in the afternoon. One particular sequence in which we watch each and every one of the characters perform the same task over and over again is especially difficult to get through. The movie's name is "Rapid Exchange", but the exchange is far from rapid - it's overlong and bloated to extremes. Perhaps it would have worked if any of the characters had real personalities, but come on, there's only so much you can ask out of a straight-to-video movie airing of Showtime Extreme.Thankfully, there are several laughs, intentional and unintentional (Lorenzo Lamas is seemingly a master of disguise, which makes for a couple of incredibly bizarre scenarios), and Lance returns in the film's end, albeit for a brief period of time. It's a bad movie, and I probably didn't have to tell you that myself, but it's far from the worst thing I've ever seen. I wouldn't put it too high on the list of Henriksen films, since he's been in some real gems with greater screen time, and either way the movie loses a lot of steam once the heist begins, but the best thing I can say for Rapid Exchange is that the last two films I watched before it were the mainstream Hostage and the overrated, pretentious Crash - and this was better than both.