Snakes on a Plane (2006)

There are films that arrive with a genuine air of mystery about whether they can possibly live up to their own premise, and Snakes on a Plane (2006) is perhaps the purest example of that phenomenon in recent memory. Released by New Line Cinema in August of that year, the film concerns FBI agent Neville Flynn, tasked with escorting a witness from Honolulu to Los Angeles to testify against a dangerous mob boss. The plan, as plans in these films tend to do, goes sideways when an assassin releases hundreds of venomous snakes into the cabin mid-flight. What followed its announcement was a rare and genuinely strange moment in internet culture: the film's blunt, almost confrontational title sparked a wave of online enthusiasm long before the film was even finished, with fan-generated content and meme activity reaching a pitch that New Line reportedly took note of during post-production. It is one of the earlier examples of internet hype actively shaping a mainstream Hollywood release, and that cultural context is impossible to separate from the film itself.

Behind the camera is David R. Ellis, a director who came up largely through stunt work before moving into features, and whose background gives him a practical, kinetic sensibility for action set-pieces. The screenplay, worked on by several writers over the course of a somewhat turbulent development, wears its B-movie ambitions openly, and there is no real pretence of it being anything other than a high-concept genre exercise built around a single irresistible hook. For a sense of what Samuel L. Jackson was doing in other corners of his career around this period, it is worth looking at Black Snake Moan, which came out the same year and finds him in rather more sombre territory, or the earlier Jackie Brown, where he turns in one of the more unsettling performances of his filmography.

The cast around Jackson is a cheerfully mixed bag. Julianna Margulies, familiar to television audiences from ER, plays a senior flight attendant and brings a grounded, capable energy to proceedings that the film benefits from. Nathan Phillips takes the role of the witness Flynn is protecting, and Kenan Thompson, by 2006 already a long-standing presence on American television, appears in a supporting role. The film runs to 105 minutes and, for better or worse, commits fully to its own logic, or lack thereof. If you are after a companion piece on the creature-feature end of the thriller spectrum, the site's review of Anaconda covers similar reptilian ground from a few years earlier, and Hardcore Henry is there if you want to read about another action film that bets everything on a single outrageous formal conceit.

Snakes on a Plane is exactly what the title promises, and honestly, that’s kind of why it works. You don’t watch this film expecting subtlety or deep character arcs. You watch it because snakes are on a plane, and Samuel L. Jackson is there to deliver the most iconic line in action history. And yes, it lives up to the hype, because how could it not. Our generation's "chicken jockey" It’s pure, unapologetic shlock from start to finish: ridiculous plot (drug dealers release venomous snakes mid-flight to kill a witness), increasingly absurd snake attacks, and zero regard for realism. But within its B-movie lane, it delivers. The tone is just self-aware enough to be fun without winking too hard, and Jackson brings his full gravitas to a role that lesser actors would phone in. He plays it straight, serious, heroic (even as he’s elbow-deep in snake guts) and that commitment elevates the whole thing. Kenan Thompson shows up in a great early cameo (a welcome surprise post-Goodburger), and there are a few other fun bits but the film drags in the middle and the supporting cast is forgettable. Not great cinema, not trying to be. But as a campy, over-the-top thrill ride with one legendary performance at its core it earns its cult status.

That verdict more or less matches where I had landed on it too. The cult status is earned, but it is earned narrowly, on the back of one man's refusal to treat the material as beneath him. Jackson's straight-faced commitment is genuinely the load-bearing wall of the whole enterprise, and without it the self-aware silliness would tip over into something far less enjoyable. The middle stretch is a real slog, and the film would have been sharper at ten minutes shorter, but when it is working it is working in a very specific and satisfying way. Sometimes that is enough. Not every film needs to be more than what it says on the tin.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 2006  | Watched: 2025-09-22

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Trailer

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Related on Movies With Macca

More with Samuel L. Jackson: Black Snake Moan (2006) · Jumper (2008) · Pulp Fiction (1994) · The Hateful Eight (2015)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)