My sisters cat killed exactly one mouse in his time, jumping onto a pillow, thus suffocating and or crushing the poor creature hiding underneath it. This is the fate of one of the baddies in Drop Zone, Wesley Snipes tumbles aimlessly down a staircase in a semi-embrace and crushes him to death. It’s a fight sequence apparently choreographed by a guy specialising in the pub carpark brawl genre, there are no winners, especially not the audience. Drop Zone feels like that cat killing a mouse by accident, it’s interesting moments and flashes of real excitement are in mistakes, often dangerous ones. For instance, in one stunt a dump truck drives slowly down a street and 3 performers parachute into the back, the first nearly misses and bangs of the side landing painfully in the back, another overshoots and is clearly about to be run over, while one hits the mark. It’s terrifying and real, but carefully edited around as it’s a crushed mouse, not a successful intentional kill.

A 1994 skydiving heist movie starring Wesley Snipes and Gary Busey should be amazing, seeing it squandered is frustrating. It’s a film preoccupied with skydivers being a different breed, the ultimate badasses, their world is full of slang, people don’t die in an accident they ’burn in’. That just doesn’t translate to screen, display parachuting isn’t that interesting or nail-biting to watch. There are these accidents, these real moments of fear, but that’s another thing and even if they could carry the movie, it would’t be fair to rate them on it.

The whole thing is unfocused, with a paper thin premise and a meandering plot. Snipes puts in an inconsistent performance and it’s taken as a given that he’ll get with the female lead Yancy Butler, who’s character is just always being robbed of agency. Overall, the film misses the drop zone and lands on a bystander, killing them and getting featured on a 100 greatest skydiving accidents VHS.