You have three seconds to name Wesley Snipes’ best ‘90s action movie: Go! As the numbers tally, only six options remain: New Jack City, Passenger 57, Boiling Point, Rising Sun, Demolition Man, and Blade. If we’re talking crime-action, New Jack City reigns supreme. Horror-Action? Blade all damn day. Sci-Fi Action? Demolition Man is too silly to miss. But if we’re simply counting hyper-violent, hard-boiled action fare – it’s hard to elevate above Passenger 57 – a lean, mean, bullet-laced blitzkrieg of thrilling throwback action made in the wake of Die Hard. In the film, Snipes portrays John Cutter, a badass airport security expert who finds himself in a hijacked airliner overrun by Charles “The Rane of Terror” Rane and his undercover henchmen.
Despite overtly adopting the Die Hard formula of isolating a grumpy, charismatic hero in a single location and pitting them against a troupe of gun-toting terrorists, Passenger 57 soars above most cheap imitators and brazen knock-offs and ascends into rarified air as one of Snipes’ most kick-ass action extravaganzas. With the film celebrating its 32nd anniversary this November, it’s only right to give Snipes his just due. Flight risk or not, remember to “Always bet on Black” as we find out What Happened to Passenger 57 ahead!
Checkered Hollywood filmmaker Stewart Raffill conceived Passenger 57’s story following the infamous debacle of Mac and Me (Paul Rudd’s favorite movie), one of the worst E.T. rip-offs known to man. Raffill’s original script for Passenger 57 was designed as a starring action vehicle for someone like Clint Eastwood. The initial story involved a grieving loner en route to Spain to bury his son, when Iranian terrorists suddenly overrun his airplane and divert it toward Tehran. Once the plane is redirected to Iran, Eastwood’s character escapes captivity, captures several Iranian hostages, and exchanges them for American detainees. According to Raffill, the script was drastically altered when the project movies from Columbia to Warner Bros., stating:
“It would have seen Clint Eastwood on a plane flying home from Spain and it gets hijacked by Iranian terrorists who take it to Tehran. So everyone is put in cages, but Clint works out where he’s been taken and he eventually gets out, rescues all the other prisoners, finds the Mullahs, and then takes them prisoner and everyone fights their way out of Iran.
The action was incredible, but it was too much money. The head of Columbia Pictures said that he would have loved to make that film, but the Iranians would have blown up a plane or something. So Warner Brothers bought it and kept re-writing until only the first quarter or so remained.”
Due to the escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran in the wake of the first Gulf War, Warner Bros. demanded Raffill alter the screenplay. According to Raffill via Slash Film:
“The head of the studio said to me, ‘If I make that movie, they’ll blow up the theaters.’ So I did a couple of re-writes for them, for Warner Bros. who owned it, then I got another picture and came back and then it became a black movie.”
When Raffill says Passenger 57 “became a black movie,” he’s referring to the initial casting of John Cutter, the widowed airline security expert thrust into heroic duty. Before Snipes earned the part, Sylvester Stallone was offered the part but he turned down to make Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, a dubious decision he may want to take back retrospectively. Once Stallone turned down the role, a sly in-joke was made by writers by naming Cutter’s buddy, Sly Delvecchio after Stallone’s nickname. Speaking of Delvecchio, Michael Madsen turned down the role before the late Tom Sizemore was cast. Other actors considered to play Cutter before Snipes was cast included The Boz, Brian Bosworth, who had to decline to accommodate his post-NFL career surgery. Passenger 57 was one of two projects at Warner Bros. offered to Steven Seagal. The other was Under Seige, which Seagal chose to make. Both films were released in 1992, with Passenger 57 knocking Under Seige out of the number-one spot at the U.S. box office. Always bet on black indeed!
Once the film was reconceived as a starring actioner for a Black movie star, Eddie Murphy and Denzel Washington topped the list of casting hopefuls. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Snipes playing Cutter, especially given the number of authentic stunts he performed in the film. Before photography began, Passenger 57 was written to take place at night, but the script was changed to daytime to cut costs. Rewrites came from screenwriters Dan Gordon and David Loughery, the latter of whom recently passed away in July 2024. Actor-turned-director Kevin Hooks was tapped to fly Passenger 57 to commercial success, which he did when the film quadrupled its budget worldwide. Hooks’ father, Robert Hooks, plays FBI Agent Dwight Henderson.
As for the movie’s numerical title, Raffill claims he came up with Passenger 57 after randomly spotting a bottle of Heinz 57 Ketchup nearby. Yeah, this is the same dude who wrote and directed Tammy and the T-Rex! Raffill also claims that only Passenger 57’s first 20 minutes retain his contributions.
Fuelled by a $15 million budget, the principal photograph of Passenger 57 began on January 13, 1992, and finished on February 26, 1992. Despite the story occurring in a small Louisiana airport, the brisk six-week film shoot occurred in Orlando and Sanford, Florida, with additional aerial scenes shot in the Florida Keys. Snipes lived in Orlando, and filming occurred close to his house. Snipes visited his old high school, Jones High in Orlando, and offered paid extra work to honor students with the highest GPAs. The qualifying students were placed on a list and chosen at random to appear in the film and share lunch with Snipes after a day of filming. The youngsters selected can be spotted in the movie’s vibrant carnival chase scene as Cutter hotly pursues British terrorist Charles Rane, the golden-mulleted madman played with scene-stealing intensity by Bruce Payne. Regarding giving back to his community, Snipes told E! News:
“It should be a normal thing where if you came from a place, you give respect to the people who got you through that. Or you go back, and you give a little something to those who are coming up, who are looking at you and everybody else at the school is telling them. ‘hey, you know who went to school here, such and such went to school here.’ So you come back, and you make yourself known. You become part of their lives, so that’s the purpose of having the whole Jones thing here.”
Footage of Snipes eating lunch, talking with, and educating the students can be seen on the E! News making-of documentary, which comes highly recommended for Passenger 57 fans. If nothing else, Snipes’ authenticity as a humble, down-to-earth movie star willing to give back to the less fortunate makes him even cooler and more relatable.
Apart from the 300+ extras used for the carnival sequence, it’s also worth noting that Elizabeth Hurley gives one of her earliest performances in a career-launching turn, playing Rane’s covert accomplice, Sabrina Ritchie.
Hooks hired David Cronenberg’s longtime cinematographer, Mark Irwin, to shoot Passenger 57. Irwin’s previous credits include Videodrome, The Dead Zone, The Fly, and non-Cronenberg flicks The Blob, Fright Night Part 2, Dark Angel, Class of 1999, RoboCop 2, and more.
Scenes set in Lousiana’s Lake Lucille Airport were filmed at the Orlando-Sanford International Airport. Due to the hasty schedule and budgetary restrictions, grounded scenes on the tarmac were often filmed at the authentic airport between landings and take-offs. The airport control room and communication tower were photographed at the nearby Naval Air Station Sanford. The location was destroyed shortly after filming. Although producers originally intended to film at the Orlando International Airport, the airport was too booked and busy to accommodate filming. Instead, the Orlando-Sanford Airport afforded Hooks and crew to utilize an 8,000-ft runway to choreograph several visceral action set pieces. The interior plane sequences were filmed in linear order to maintain continuity.
As for other memorable scenes in the film, Cutter begins reading Sun Tzu’s The Art of War on the plane en route to Los Angeles. Of course, Snipes would star in the loose big-screen adaptation of The Art of War eight years later in 2000, capping his iconic ‘90s action movie run.
For the hijacking scene, Rich International Airlines provided an aircraft for the exterior shots. The pilot overtaken by Rane is a real pilot who worked for the airline. The model of airplane that Rane and his crew steal is a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, easily identifiable by its triple Rolls Royce motor.
Another unforgettable moment in Passenger 57 comes when an old lady hilariously mistakes Cutter for Arsenio Hall, the popular actor, stand-up comedian, and TV host. In a playful response, the TV show Martial Law poked fun at the confusion when Arsenio Hall’s character is mistaken as Wesley Snipes after a woman states, “I loved you in Passenger 57!”
As for the ultimate showdown between Cutter and Rain on the tarmac, zero stunt doubles were utilized. In addition to riding the motorcycle earlier in the film at his insistence, Snipes performed nearly all his stunts in Passenger 57. Despite producers protesting the decision, Snipes, Payne, and Hooks remained adamant that the fight scene be filmed without using body doubles and stunt performers. The absurd plotholes aside, the result is a brutally badass blitz of blood-soaked, brain-bashing bliss!
In addition to a black director and movie star leading the way, Passenger 57’s soundtrack was composed by iconic black jazz bassist Stanley Clarke, who worked on Boyz n the Hood and The Five Heartbeats one year earlier. Although the main theme was oddly omitted from the movie’s official soundtrack release, it can be heard on the compilation album Stanley Clarke: At the Movies. Stranger yet, the song “Chaos on the Tarmac” was remixed and used in the trailer for the Van Damme action flick Sudden Death, released three years after Passenger 57. While Hollywood mandates such inclusionary measures in 2024 as a kind of creative censorship, the black talent involved with Passenger 57 developed organically through earned merit, the way it should be.
Passenger 57 touched down in theaters on November 6, 1992, instantly becoming a commercial success. The film took down Under Siege to become the #1 movie at the U.S. box office. Ending its theatrical run, Passenger 57 grossed $44 million domestically, nearly tripling its production budget. The film added $22 million in overseas grosses, totaling $66 million globally before factoring in the home video sales and rentals. The film solidified Wesley Snipes as a bona fide action star, leading to a string of high-profile hits and misses for the actor in the ‘90s, including Rising Sun, Demolition Man, Drop Zone, Money Train, The Fan, Murder at 1600, U.S. Marshalls, the Blade trilogy, and The Art of War. Meanwhile, Kevin Hooks followed Passenger 57 with the action movie Fled before returning to television where his career began.
Critically speaking, Passenger 57 suffered its fair share of turbulence. The film boasts a paltry 30% on Rotten Tomatoes and a middling 50 Metascore, indicating average to subpar reviews. However, according to one of the film’s longtime producers, Lee Rich, the movie struck a chord with audiences due to the comedic quips and refreshing one-liners that add comic relief to the action. As Rich told the L.A. Times upon the film’s release:
“You sit there for an hour and a half to be entertained. You walk out and you’ve had a good time. That’s all you can ever ask of a movie. I think the violence and everything else (in action films) turns them off. If you can have a little humor with it, they accept it for what it is.”
Despite Passenger 57 launching Snipes’ career as a legitimately bankable action movie star, it’s interesting to note that outside of Blade, Snipes never made a sequel to his popular 90s action movies. However, in a cool cameo, Snipes appears as Blade in the currently playing smash hit Marvel movie, Deadpool & Wolverine.
Now that we’re all caught up, it’s time to ground this motherf*cker and say, That’s What Happened to Passenger 57! The title was inspired by a goddamn ketchup bottle and the story was conceived by the man who gave the world Mac and Me. The dramatic action was originally meant as a starring vehicle for a white action hero like Clint Eastwood or Sylvester Stallone before Wesley Snipes won the part over Eddie Murphy and Denzel Washington when the project was retooled for a black actor. Snipes was in total control while on the set, performing most of his own stunts and actively repaying his career successes to his Orlando stomping ground by giving local honor students paid background extra roles. Fly Hard rip-off or not, Passenger 57 remains one of Snipes’ best ‘90s action flicks, and John Cutter still holds as one of his most badass movie characters. If any of Snipes’ halcyon day action characters deserves a sequel, it has to be John “Smooth as Butter” Cutter.