From the director of Final Destination 2 and Cellular comes a modern day disaster film in the form of Snakes on a Plane (SoaP). Taking the best of aeroplane disaster films, and B-movie horror, smack them together and you have a cheesy aeroplane disaster B-movie film.

When Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson) eliminates a prosecutor, poor Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips) ends up being the witness to that murder. Kim decides to have his men track Sean down and eliminate him too. Fortunately for Sean, back up arrives in the form of Neville Flynn (Samuel L Jackson), and it’s with his support that Sean feels he can travel to LA to acts as a prosecution witness against Eddie Kim.

Kim, however, has other plans for Sean, and after failing to eliminate him once, takes a gamble by trapping snakes in a time locked container and placing them on the plane that is bound for LA with Sean and a passenger load of civilians on board too. It’s a survival game, Neville Flynn is taking no chances.

The first forty-five minutes of the film settle you in for what’s going to be coming around the corner. There’s no great mystery about what the film is about. On board a plane are container full of poisonous snakes, thus there are poisonous snakes on a plane. The movie title gives it away, but even if that didn’t, the first twenty to twenty-five minutes does give the game away.

What’s left is the mystery of how the victims will survive the snakes on the plane, if they will survive it at all. Or whether the witness will make it to LA to prosecute Eddie Kim. Although, you may question the plausibility of such a situation, particularly since we’re never even told how Flynn found out Sean was a witness to the murder and then proceeds to save his backside. Flynn may as well have been a pizza delivery boy for all the sense those scenes make up.

Now I have to say that Snakes on a Plane is an incredibly violent film, with a lot of gratuitous scenes of death. People die, have their eye gouged, fall through objects like a skewer through a kebab, and generally die all over the place. There’s anarchy on the screen coupled with a large amount of blood and gore. I’m talking chopped off limbs, but people being poisoned to death, being bitten to death and so on.

The snakes in the film are the most vicious and violent bunch I’ve ever seen. This is explained by a plot development at the start of the film, where if you miss it you’ll simply end up confused and baffled as to why the snakes are so hyper-aggressive. They’re also well animated, and I found it hard to tell apart the fake snakes from the CG variety. They definitely are the stars of the show, and they act out their performance with great venom (pun intended).

What I did dislike about the film was the build up to it, as it was rather dry and dull to be honest, offering nothing at all that could be considered entertaining. At times it was like watching an episode of Airworlf or something, badly acted, no development and no real understanding.

Another failing for me was the cliché driven story line, and the fact that Samuel L Jackson, a man of many talents and one of the coolest American actors, doesn’t really get a look in. Sure he delivers some one liners, but relly his presence there is non-existent. If it wasn’t Samuel L Jackson, it could have been Lawrence Fishburne playing the role, or even Jamie Foxx. All would deliver different performances, but their lines would still be pretty rubbish. There’s nothing of substance that’s worthy of a starring role. Had it not been for the fact that it had a known Hollywood star in the starring role, then the film would have gone straight to video. I’m sure the film makers were laughing themselves silly when Jackson signed up for a starring role. Little did he know that CG and robotics would sideline him for the lead.

Snakes on a Plane has tight direction that often adds a great sense of tension. You never quite know who’s going to bite the dust, but sadly it’s never the ones you hope it is. Would it be too much to ask for a baby to die, or perhaps a couple of brattish children? But no, Hollywood plays it safe and make the deaths slightly ambiguous, but generally obvious, if that isn’t too much of a contradiction. By that I mean, you don’t know who will die, except the fact it’s going to be a bunch of adults.

All in all, Snakes on a Plane is a tense action disaster film that has a lot going for it. The stars are, as mentioned, not Samuel Jackson but the snakes themselves and those that end up on the receiving end of their fangs. I mean writing this now, with my legs under my desk I’m worried I might get bitten by a snake! It’s a pretty good film overall, and offers a thrilling and terrifying 105 minutes of entertainment.

In the end, that’s all a film has to do, is to entertain, and that’s exactly what Snakes on a Plane manages. Even if Samuel Jackson wasn’t in the picture, the performances delivered by the dying and the terror caused by the snakes is enough to make the film a watch. Overall this film brings back something lacking in todays films: fun.

Verdict: Terrifying and fun, Snakes on a Plane is gratifying entertainment with a lot of bite.