Your short flight from LAX to Cabo San Lucas goes down. Way down.
You’re trapped in an air pocket in the fuselage some distance below the surface. There are sharks outside, a limited air supply inside, and help may or may not get there “in time.”
What do you do?
That’s the winning premise of the thriller “No Way Up,” a picture that presents us with a survivable air crash scenario and a grim dilemma and invites the cast of “survivors” and the viewer to work the problem.
This disaster movie, from some of the people who made the “47 Meters Down” pictures (not the writers or directors), has a little suspense but very little sense of urgency, which considering the prospects of the half dozen or so folks trapped, is a problem. Lacking much in the way of pace or panic, if just sort of flounders.
Sophie McIntosh is Ava, the fetching daughter of a California governor running for re-election. She’s met two college friends (Jeremias Armoore, Will Attenborough) for a little vacation-reunion in Cabo San Lucas.
What can go wrong? Well, as she’s the daughter of a famous person, lots of things. Which is why Dad’s go-to retired bodyguard (Colm Meaney) comes along as a “babysitter.”
We have just enough time to get acquainted with the gay flight attendant (Manuel Pacifo), the elderly couple (Phyllis Logan and James Carroll Jordan) taking their 10 year-old British granddaughter (Grace Nettles) to their condo in Cabo when the plane goes down.
Ava’s “I just like having you around” foreshadowing pays off as Brandon (Meaney) quickle sizes up the situation, their options and possible rescue.
“Look for anybody getting drousy,” he tells Ava as he heads off to rummage for anything useful in the totally-submerged plane. That’s the give-away that they’re running out of air. He doesn’t suggest tapping on the hull, the time-honored way of letting survivors of a sinking know there’s life below. And no, his assessment of how “stable” the plane teetering on an undersea shelf is cannot be right.
But nobody figures on the instant arrival of sharks looking for snacks.
Most everything in this lumbering thriller, scripted by producer-turned-producer/screenwriter Andy Mayson and directed by Claudio Fäh, the Swiss director of a couple of lesser “Sniper” sequels and “Northmen: A Viking Saga,” is predictable down to the timing of what happens and when.
But the underwater photography is striking, the sinking plane set convincing and a few of the jolts work.
The performances may be uneven — with old pros Meaney and “Downton Abbey” vet Logan giving fair value and McIntosh managing the proper privileged-but-proves-to-be-plucky heroine.
As for everybody else, this can’t have been the most comfortable set to spend hours and hours on, and a little of that claustrophia makes it into the performances. Still, “lack of urgency” trumps that, and that is created through editing for pace. If “No Way Up” goes down for the third time, that’s not on the actors.
Rating: R, violence, profanity, a harrowing plane crash and gruesome shark attacks
Cast: Sophie McIntosh, Jeremias Amoore, Manuel Pacific, Will Attenborough, Grace Nettle, Phyllis Logan and Colm Meaney.
Credits: Directed by Claudio Fäh, scripted by Andy Mayson. An RLJE film, an IFC release.
Running time: 1:30
Movie Nation 
I quite agree. When Ava’s boyfriend gets his leg ripped off by the shark, it’s like something fell on his foot without the pain being unbearable. Still, the acting is average and their fear is mediocrely palpable. Not much inspiration, copying a little from Final Destination 1 and 5 when the passengers are sucked into the air. The film is a very bland mix of Poseidon, Airport 77, Jaws and Final Destination. The characters’ various emotions are superficial, they’re just part of the film’s décor, and the plot is stitched together. Films like this are a dime a dozen, nothing spectacular, nothing innovative, they all look the same. It’s a good thing I didn’t pay for it. It’s moderately scary, and sometimes you just want to laugh nervously at how implausible it all seems. A quickly forgotten film.