Snakes on a Plane

[Casey]

has it been announced for bluray yet?

if not i'll probably buy the dvd today

[Zvi]

Nah, AFAIK wasn't. Why don't U rent tho. I haven't bought a DVD except FireFly series for last 3 years waiting for hidef to arrive

[Casey]

yea thats true i guess i could rent it

[Banjo]

New Line Cinema has yet to announce any Blu-Ray titles at the moment. I don't think Alliance Atlantis (Canadian Distributor of New Line Cinema movies) has announced anything yet either.

[The Great Owl]

Enough time has passed since the meme-building media hype that greeted the action thriller, Snakes on a Plane, upon its release in 2006 that the film can now be enjoyed on its own terms as a solid great popcorn B movie that is perfect for Saturday afternoon viewing.

The premise, about hundreds of venomous snakes that are placed aboard a 747 passenger jet in order to kill a Federal witness who is being flown from Honolulu to Los Angeles to testify in court against a murderous underworld figure, gets off of the ground just minutes into the feature, allowing the tried-and-true Stagecoach narrative trope to work its magic as diverse characters are thrown together by circumstance to battle a common adversary. The ability of Samuel L. Jackson, as FBI Agent Neville Flynn, to play it straight is the fuel that powers this engine, even when the slithery bad-CGI-effects titular villains are at their most ridiculous. Throw in Nathan Phillips as the reluctant surfer-boy witness, Julianna Margulies and Sunny Mabrey as flight attendants, Rachel Blanchard as a Paris Hilton-style rich girl with her little dog, Flex Alexander as a famous hip hop artist, and Elsa Pataky as a young mother for an end result of likable people who are entertaining to watch in their own right.

With all of the above attributes at play, we can forgive the fact that the serpents actually roar out loud as they stalk their victims. The production utilized more actual live snakes on the set than is readily apparent to the viewer, complete with several wranglers on hand to ensure that the animals behaved in a professional manner, but they are depicted with such a garish sheen that they don't look much more realistic than their computer-generated incarnations. The green-tinted “snake vision” camera perspectives are priceless. Sub-par visuals aside, the full-tilt snakepocalypse that ensues when the creatures are first discovered dropping from above onto the passengers is effectively grisly and captivating. There are so many hypothetical ways to die from a snakebite, and this movie, God bless it, shows us every single one.

I have always loved the non-ironic earnestness of this outing that places it in the same realm as the 1970s disaster movies that served as its primary influence. There's always a joy to be found in watching unlikely characters step up to the plate to perform heroic deeds and in watching everyone band together to save a child who has been bitten.

There's a scene in Snakes in a Plane where a male flight attendant places a snake in a microwave to kill it, and he pushes the “Snake” preset button on the microwave. This is outstanding.

This New Line Cinema Blu-ray is roughly a decade old, but it is still a thing of beauty in terms of video presentation.

[AmishParadise]

I just retired my DVD of this recently. Money well spent. Very much enjoyed revisiting this on Blu-ray!