Review of Cutaway

Cutaway (2000 TV Movie)
7/10
EIght's always the fastest!
25 December 2007
Warning: Spoilers
**SPOILERS** Staking out an airfield outside Miami to catch a plane smuggling cocaine the US Custom Agents are shocked to find that all the plane had in it's cargo bay was hundreds of pounds of freshly caught shrimps!

Feeling that their being made to look like mindless buffoons the custom agents headed by Let. Brian Margate, Ron Silver, and his very eager assistant, wearing a clip-on Abe Lincoln-type beard as a disguise, Vic Cooper, Stephen Baldwin, go all out in finding just how these drug-smugglers are making monkeys out of them and the US Custom Services. Vic almost by accident figures out, by mistakingly rescuing a paratroop GI Joe doll, how all this is done and then goes to infiltrate a local Miami skydiving team to get the goods, as well as the dope, on them!

Not much of a story but loads of spectacular airborne action with Vic getting at first over his head and then with the program as he becomes the top flight diver of an eight man, really seven men and one woman, canopy formation act headed by skydiving legend Red Line, Tom Barenger. Vic secretly getting trained in skydiving by US Army skydiving team Captain Delmira, Casper Van Dien, whom Red Line's Miami skydivers are to later compete with quickly gets the hang of the sport. Vic is so good that he soon unseats the top diver, besides Red Line, Randy "Turbo" Kingston, Dennis Rodman, from his position as the #7 diver; Red Line is #8 or the anchor of the skydiving team. With Turbo mad as a hornet in getting dropped he and Vic have it out later in the movie in a kamikaze like dive where Turbo gets his neck broke in midair and dies before he ever hit the ground.

What Vic was later to find out is that both Red Line and the late Turbo Kingston were the only two of the skydiving team involved in drug trafficking. They were using the money to finance their first and only love skydiving in supplying their teammates the equipment that they needed but for the most part, with them not having a job or cash to pay for it, couldn't afford.

The movie "Cutaway" only comes to life when we see Red Line and his team, as well as later Captain Demira's Goldan Knights, in action. The big build up for the Championship of Skydiving Competition Contest, at Myrtle Beach S. Carolina, is well paced and doesn't drag the film down with drug angle kept almost out of the story until the last few minutes in the film.

You don't have to be into skydiving to appreciate the heart-stopping scenes of Red Line's and Delmira's teams go into action as the two groups of skydivers break record after record competing against each other over the blue sunny and deadly skies of Myrtle Beach. Taking the lead over the Miami, or Red Line, team the Goldan Knights rack up an unbelievable score, in their four skydives, of an average of 13.08 seconds! That's the time it took the Goldan Knights to makes formation after the first man jumped, going at speeds of 160 to 180 MPH, out of the plane!

With defeat looking him in the face Red Line finally realizes that Vic is an undercover US Custom Agent setting him up for a fall. It's then when Red Line, cracked ribs and all, gives it all that he's, as well as Vic and the rest of his team, got in a desperate and suicidal-like dive with Vic close behind.***SPOILERS*** That almost impossible effort on Red Line's part not only pulls out a victory from out of the jaws of defeat but also prevents him form falling into the arms of to law, with Let. Margate & Co waiting for Red Line on the ground to arrest him.

P.S Red Line's passion and love of the sport of skydiving made a believer out of Victor Cooper who in the end gave up his career as a law enforcer and took to the skies. A place where a man, or woman, is completely free without, like back on earth, any strings attached. Except the strings of the parachute he or she's wearing.
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