Framed on charges of dumping toxic waste, Morgan (Billy Zane) accepts a CIA mission to travel to the fictional African country of Zambeze and to track down his former friend, Jim Scott (Robert Downey, Jr.).  Scott is an ex-CIA agent who faked his own death and who is now leading a revolution against the oppressive government of Zambeze.  Scott knows the location of several barrels of uranium.  Also searching for the uranium is the ruthless Mr. Chang (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa).  Morgan teams up with Dr. Kim Woods (Lisa Collins) but soon discovers that he has to be careful of who to trust.

There is a surprisingly lot of talent in the cast of this film.  Along with Zane, Downey, Collins, and Tagawa, Ron Silver appears as the shady political operative who joins Morgan in Zambeze.  The cast may be good but it doesn’t take long to see that everyone in this film was there mostly for the money.  No one brings their A-game to Danger Zone and both Downey and Silver often look like they’re struggling to deliver their lines with a straight face.  Downey, especially, gives a self-amused performance, delivering his lines in a thick and indecipherable Southern accent.

(It is easy to forget that there was a time when Robert Downey, Jr’s career was regularly cited as being the ultimate Hollywood cautionary tale.  Everyone knew he was talented but, in the 90s, his well-publicized struggle with drug addiction and the time that he spent in jail made him practically uninsurable and unhirable.  He ended up appearing in a lot of films like this one before he eventually got clean and reinvented himself as the face of the MCU.  In the 90s, most people would probably have been shocked to hear that Downey would eventually win an Oscar and receive a standing ovation as he accepted it.)

Danger Zone does have some good action scenes.  The movie ends with an attack on a train that is actually pretty exciting.  Unfortunately, the rest of the film suffers from bad acting and an incoherent plot that makes Danger Zone almost impossible to follow.  You can fly into the Danger Zone but you won’t want to stay.