TERMINAL VELOCITY (1994) - Skydiving Charlie Sheen saves the day

Inspired by Charlie Sheen's recent hilarious interviews and his bi-winning ways, I decided it might be fun to take a look at some of Sheen's older movies from the 90s,  back when he was still a bankable action star. Originally, I meant to watch and review Navy SEALs, but I couldn't get my hands on a copy, so I settled for the next best thing: a movie about Charlie Sheen as a sky diving instructor who fights Russian spies and mobsters. The plot makes about as much sense as Charlie's twitter feed, but rest assured, plenty of good laughs are to be found.

"Are you one of my goddesses?"

The movie opens with a blonde chick having an angry conversation over the phone in Russian, talking about how she's been compromised and it's time to leave Tucson. All of a sudden, some thugs break into her house, grab her and start to torture her, asking where they can find her sister. She refuses to give her up and they kill her. The scene switches to a skydiving school, where 'Ditch' Brodie (Charlie Sheen) is one of the hotshot instructors with a bad reputation. His latest stunt involved him dropping down into a 8-year old's birthday party (instead of the intended bachelorette party) wearing leather pants and with his ass showing. On top of that, the FAA has been investigating him for other safety violations.

The glorious, glorious '90s.

A pretty blonde named Chris (Nastassja Kinski) shows up to Ditch's company, asking for a first time lesson in skydiving. Ditch finds her pretty hot and agrees to take her up for her first jump. While getting ready for the jump, Chris says she saw another plane outside the window. When Ditch goes to the cockpit to investigate, he comes back and sees Chris has in fact, gone full retard and fallen out of the plane. He dives after her, trying to save her, but her chute won't open and she is killed. Ditch is distressed, and soon enough a safety inspector named Pinkwater (James Gandolfini) shows up to investigate the girl's death. Pinkwater seems to be really interested in finding out as much as he can about the girl. Ditch does a little digging by himself, and after breaking into Chris's apartment, realizes she'd been lying to him.

Unbelievable plot twist? YOU BETCHA.

He realizes she had faked her own death, and they eventually meet again. Chris reveals she's actually Krista Moldova, an ex-Russian spy on the run from the same guys who killed her sister earlier in the movie. It turns out that Pinkwater and his crew are ex-KGB mobsters, planning to steal a shitload of gold bars to finance a coup back home in Russia. Ditch and Krista will have to stop Pinkwater and his boys before they can get away with the gold, and prevent a new Cold War.

Don't worry, it's just a Cadillac.

Terminal Velocity is pretty much what you'd expect from an action movie starring Charlie Sheen. It's got heaps of  hilarious one-liners, sex jokes, and close ups of Sheen making weird faces. Charlie does a decent job with his character, and his comedy flows well with the action.. The girl  is decent enough as well, seeing as how she's pretty much unknown. Everyone else is as you'd expect, crappy. Gandolfini's okay, but everyone else seems to have taken their acting lessons from Billy Madison. The best part about the movie are definitely the stunts, like the scene where Charlie drives a Cadillac out of a flying plane (pretty epic shit actually), or jumps from one plane to another.

Yes, that's Charlie Sheen riding a rocket. WINNING.

Sadly, they don't really have a chance in hell of saving this pic from being anything but a cheesy, overacted action fick. It doesn't really matter all that much though, since a lot of it is tongue in cheek and the movie works much better when you've got a couple beers in you anyway. Watch it for the laughs and cheap thrills.

TL;DR - Classic Sheen actioner. Check your brain at the door and stay bi-winning. - 6.5/10