SLIPSTREAM

* ½

STARRING: Bill Paxton, Bob Peck, Mark Hamill, Kitty Aldridge, Eleanor David, F. Murray Abraham, Ben Kingsley, Robbie Coltrane, Roshan Seth

1989, 92 Minutes, Directed by: Steven M. Lisberger

Future dystopia # 435: the world as ecological disaster zone. Except, well, it doesn't look that bad to me. (Some stunning locales in Turkey and the Yorkshire Moors.) After something called the Convergence happened, the earth is buffeted by extreme winds and people mostly live in caves in mountains and the most viable means of transport is taking small aircraft along the so-called slipstream.

But all of this has little to do with Slipstream's unoriginal plot which involves Bill (Twister - also a wet fart of a movie) Paxton stealing a prisoner from lawman Mark Hamill (yeah, now you know what happened to Luke Skywalker after Star Wars: he ended up in movies like this). Paxton wants to claim the reward on the prisoner's head for himself see. Needless to say, Hamill sets off in hot pursuit. There wouldn't be a movie otherwise, would there?

Surprisingly Mark Hamill is the best thing in the entire movie! He convincingly portrays the bad kick ass lawman like one would have expected him to be as a fully fledged Jedi knight in Return of the Jedi instead of the whining farm boy wuss he ultimately turned out to be.

Ultimately this big budget British sci-fi movie that never made it to theatres in the States goes nowhere quick in its short running time and ends up (sorry, I just can't resist it) an overblown affair . . .

• See also: Cold Fusion Video Reviews.