Flight control boss Malcolm (Mark Hamill) is just beginning the last shift before his retirement, and we all know what this means in a film so clichéd the first three sentences we hear in it are of the "sometimes bad things happen to good people" type: it'll at least be the worst shift ever.
And here things begin so well for him, with bad weather reducing the whole night's flight plan to a single flight. Alas, that flight is transporting trouble in form of an ancient Chinese vase containing a god of death, various violent psychopaths, a fake-out terrorist, and more stupidity than anybody could have thought possible. On land, Mal will soon enough make the acquaintance of two particularly badly acted SIS agents, and later suffer under the worst cover-up attempt ever (I have the suspicion letting the whole night shift of a flight control centre disappear might not work, dear THEY).
Oh dear, this is really not very good. I do appreciate the puppy-like excitement with which Airborne attempts to squeeze every movie cliché you might possibly conceive of into one airplane and a flight control station, but it becomes clear very fast that the film is categorically averse to doing anything of interest with its clichés. This is the kind of film were even the twists on a clichéd situation themselves are again clichés, possibly in the hope that all the been there, done that, bought no t-shirt gubbins will cancel each other out or perhaps that it'll reach a critical mass which will create a clichésplosion that'll awaken the Great Old Ones. Obviously, said twists are also so numerous and obvious I could not help but groan in annoyance when encountering them.
If you're now hoping to hear something positive to make up for the pain, I'll have to disappoint you; there's just nothing here beyond an incessant barrage of clichés without a sense of fun or one of irony. And even though Airborne is plenty dumb, it's never dumb enough to be funny.
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