This movie reminds me of the Cube series. It's a similar Kafkaesque kind of bunch of strangers find themselves in an odd place with no memory of why they are there or how they got there. From there, they have to figure out who everyone is, if they have some relationship with each other, and why they were all taken.
Because the movie starts by implying that this is a real event, and they had to change some of the facts pursuant to the Patriot Act, this movie loses some of its bite. I'm not sure why they wanted to add that simple declaration to the beginning of the movie, but the subsequent revelation that large portions of the US had been destroyed leaves us, the viewers, wondering if we've been so wrapped up in our own issues to have noticed that a large scale assault had happened on our country without us noticing. The big reveal later comes as no surprise.
Anthony Montgomery plays the down-to-earth truck driver who wakes up first and the audience immediately identifies with. As a stereotypical truck driver, however, he's not the sharpest tool in the shed. As a result, we notice things he does not, and he does things we would not. So, he might not have been the best character for the director to pick for us. the reason Dr. Watson was so good in Sherlock Holmes was because Dr. Watson was exactly the level of intelligence that the people reading the stories was supposed to be. That way, Sherlock seemed even more brilliant. In this, we get a guy who doesn't think fast, and we feel a little superior and a bit bored.
Speaking of stereotypes, we get a lot of them in here. We have the powerful politician, the generally brainless hot chick, the geek who has no social skills, the "government contractor" who is not fooling the audience, and assorted others. All of them have their role to play, and most are on just this side of believable. Most. That CIA chick is not great.
The entire movie takes place on a plane. No, not a subway car like Red Line, the eerily similar movie about a bunch of people trying to figure out what's going on around them while suspicion and prejudices get the better of them. You get the same feeling of confinement and inability to control the surroundings, and they have to throw in an artificial timeline to keep things moving.
Acting was passable (Montgomery was actually pretty good)
Dialog was pretty lame
Story could have been good, if the characters were better
Effects were lousy
Cinematography was better than the movie probably deserved.
1.5/5