The Crew: Racy but only after half hour

CAST: Vladimir Mashkov, Danila Kozlovsky, Agne Grudyte, Katerina Shpitsa

RATED: 6/10

For an edgy drama around an aerial thriller and a relief operation from a giant volcanic eruption, this one would have passed with flying colours had the languid half hour been take care of in the beginning. The introduction to the movie is, in fact, so laidback that you think you may have come in for an irrelevant romance between pilots one of them being a trainee “with wings”.

But once the formalities are over, the film and its tight script takes off in a jiffy and keeps you airborne with excitement for the rest of the movie.

After deciding to land on a dangerous airstrip to save people in the middle of an erupting volcano, the crew battles survival in impossible situations with the airstrip melting away, parket airplanes exploding due to the liquid heat, people burning up with the buildings, the runway being on fire and a whole lot being marooned on another mountain from where the crew needs to get them.

As if this was not enough, there is mid-air transfer of victims from a low-on-fuel cargo plane to a jumbo jet at low altitude and a raging storm 24000 feet above sea level!

The drama is captured well and the thrills deftly handled with CGs with a father-son emotionality thrown in alongside to give all the catastrophe a break.

The only thing that does not take off in this film is the romance between the two pilots even though they spend life and death moments together.

On the whole, a thriller once you get over the unhappening initial first half.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 22 January, 2017