Terminal Velocity

Charlie Sheen has tried the big-screen thrill scene before — anyone recall "The Rookie," "Navy SEALS" or, earlier this year, "The Chase"?

Each of those pictures was, to one degree or another, an attempt to put Sheen over as an action-comedy star in the Bruce Willis vein — or, since "Speed," perhaps we should say, in the Keanu Reeves vein.

"Terminal Velocity" is Sheen's latest lame effort in that direction. It also reaches for some Hitch-cock-ian undertones, as Sheen becomes an innocent man on the run while trying to clear himself — and he even becomes mixed up with spies. Well, ex-spies.

But the plot is so outrageous, the dialogue so self-consciously hip and the violence so mean-spirited that "Terminal Velocity" is instead just unpleasant.

There are some eye-popping stunts, however — and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the stunts came first, with the story later built around them.

Sheen, using that whispery voice to deliver smart aleck one-liners, plays the usual chip-on-his-shoulder wise guy. In this case he's a hot-dogging skydiver who breaks the rules.

As the film opens, he is free-falling in restricted airspace — downtown Phoenix airspace. And when his chute goes up, Sheen steers himself between high-rise buildings, eventually landing on a small platform in a park. Wearing a vulgar outfit, he apparently thinks he's supposed to be putting on a show for a swinging single's birthday party. The party, as it turns out, is for a little girl. He is, naturally, chagrined. Then he's arrested.

Believe it or not, the film goes downhill from there.

Sheen is also a skydiving instructor, and later in the day he gets a new student (Nastassja Kinski) who seems nervous but insists that she be given an immediate crash course. Crash course is right. Sheen takes her up, leaves her for a moment and when he turns around, it appears she has jumped on her own. Naturally, she hits the ground without pulling her rip cord.

Sheen briefly mourns her loss, then, figuring that something is fishy, he discovers that Kinski is actually alive. It seems she's a former KGB agent (or, as Sheen says, "the KG-used-to-be") and is involved in a complicated plot about renegade former KGB agents ("the Russian Mafia," Kinski calls them) who are plotting to steal gold bars intended to help starving Russian peasants.