Pete Nessip and his brother are escorting a federal prisoner to trail. The prisoner is a top code breaker. On the plane terrorists take over, kidnap the prisoner and sky dive out of the plane Nessip's brother is killed in the raid. Nessip pursues the gang to uncover what really happened, joined a group of skydivers led by Jessie Crossman. Meanwhile Moncrief is working out his plot to secretly uncover the identities of all DEA agents and sell them to a local drug lord.
After the disaster of Passenger 57 you could understand if Snipes had passed on any more airplane related movies, but this is much better than 57 was. The story is daft of course, but it does allow plenty of good aerial photography and some good action scenes. However it takes itself a bit too seriously. It came out in the same year as Terminal Velocity (Charlie Sheen's skydiving movie), where TV was much more fun to watch as it never took itself seriously, Drop Zone loses the fun a bit by taking it all as a serious movie.
Despite that Snipes is really good as in 57 he is able to rise above the material and give a strong central performance. His charisma carries him even when his lines are weak and as usual his fight scenes are impressive. Busey does his usual bad guy stuff easily and is so-so and the rest of the cast are ok. The most interesting thing about the cast for me was the `Homicide, Life on the Street' connection that saw tow great actors from that cast in small roles here, namely Kyle Secor (who played Bayliss) and Clark Johnson (who played Lewis).
Overall this is a solid action film. It's nothing special and not overly impressive but it passes 90 minutes without leaving any negative (or positive) marks!
