Unless you’re a Millennial who had some of the tech that was in nearly every home from the ’80s, practically lived in a VHS rental store growing up (present!), a ’90s dad with a soft spot for old-fashioned actioners, or a Wesley Snipes completist, you probably don’t remember John Badham’s “Drop Zone” from 1994. Even I have trouble recalling what the plot was actually about (despite my early memories suggesting that I loved this flick as a kid) beyond the fact that Snipes’ character did some cool parachuting to stop Gary Busey’s psycho renegade and ex-DEA agent, which set this movie apart from the two stars’ other regular action films that didn’t become obvious hits or cult classics.
Evidently, “Drop Zone” was made during Snipes’ peak decade, sandwiched between more memorable joints like “Passenger 57,” “Demolition Man,” “U.S. Marshals,” and “Blade,” of course. So it was easy to miss or quickly forget about at the time, especially because Badham’s feature flopped at the box office (making $28 million domestically against its $45 million budget) and critics dismissed it as subpar action fare without much flair. But from a more than 30-year distance, the movie did get some reappraisal.
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Drop Zone is worthy to rediscover
Ty Moncrief talking and gesturing – Paramount Pictures
“Drop Zone” is essentially a revenge movie despite its overcomplicated crime plot. U.S. Marshal Pete Nessip (Snipes) swears to avenge his brother’s death after the two are attacked on a plane while escorting a computer genius criminal to a high-security prison. Behind the fiasco is a terrorist group of skydivers, led by Ty Moncrief (Busey), who kidnaps the detainee to get access to a list of undercover DEA agents he wants to sell to drug lords. Pete’s brother is nothing but collateral damage to Moncrief, but that ends up serving as the motivation for Pete to go rogue and capture the man responsible for his loss. In order to stop Moncrief and his crew, he goes into parachute training and assembles a team of his own to go after them.
That’s where the expertise of the two men, Guy Manos and Tony Griffin, behind the story comes in. Manos and Griffin were pro skydivers themselves, thus the extreme sport’s subculture laid out in “Drop Zone” feels more authentic than in your average action flick. Combined with Badham’s knack for conducting large-scale action set pieces and Snipes’ effervescent bravado to always be the coolest dude on any screen, gives the film a unique vibe and style that was overlooked in the ’90s.
As film historian Jim Hemphill put it (via IndieWire), “What gives the movie its kick is the juxtaposition of a plot in which the characters are governed more by the laws of Looney Tunes cartoons than the known universe and action set pieces more vivid and realistic than anything of their type ever put on screen.” For that alone, this forgotten and underdiscussed ’90s gem is surely worth a revisit by action fans hungry for adrenaline and nostalgia.
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