Iron Eagle.

Review #2537: Iron Eagle.

Cast: 

Louis Gossett Jr (Colonel Charles "Chappy" Sinclair), Jason Gedrick (Doug Masters), David Suchet (Ministry of Defense Colonel Akir Nakesh), Shawnee Smith (Joanie), Melora Hardin (Katie), Larry B. Scott (Reggie), Lance LeGault (General Edwards), Tim Thomerson (Colonel Ted Masters), Caroline Lagerfelt (Elizabeth Masters), Robert Jayne (Matt Masters), Jerry Levine (Tony), Robbie Rist (Milo Bazen), and Michael Bowen (Knotcher) Directed by Sidney J. Furie (#787 - Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, #2256 - The Ipcress File)

Review: 

“We knew we wanted to make a movie in which the audience could feel involved. And this seemed the right kind of story. I admit I consciously set out to make a mass-entertainment kind of picture; I did think, ‘Will millions go for this?’ But there’s no alternative these days. Nothing else works. And there’s nothing sadder than an empty theater.”

Apparently, the inspiration for the script for the film came around the time of the 1984 Summer Olympics. No, really, Sidney J. Furie and Kevin Alyn Elders started their work during the games that they found "very inspiring" and had arrived back from filming Purple Hearts (1984), where Elders had been production supervisor. They wanted to do "the kind of movie we used to sneak in to see on Saturday afternoons." After bouncing around different studios, it found its way to a guy who liked it because it resembled the Westerns with John Wayne. Filming was done in California and Israel (probably obvious, but the US Air Force does not co-operate with movie about stealing jets - this also involves renting out jets and putting on covers). Distributed by Tri-Star Pictures with a budget of $10 million to a release of January 1986 to avoid competition with Top Gun, (which was about naval aviators, as opposed to the Air Force guys here), the movie was a mild success with audiences (making double its budget) and it inspired two theatrical sequels with Iron Eagle II (1988) and Aces: Iron Eagle III (1992) along with a direct-to-video film (all but the latter were written by Elders*, while Furie co-directed the second and fourth film), all of which had Gossett Jr serve as the star.

Imagine making a movie that actually makes you appreciate the subtle qualities of Top Gun despite coming out first. There was a sliver of curiosity that this might be an interesting gem as opposed to just believing that it is the equivalent of Missing in Action being compared to Rambo: First Blood Part II. But it just doesn't cut the mustard for a well-rounded movie. Honestly, this probably would've been better as a comedy, because it almost sounds like a test run for Hot Shots! [1991] (just to throw a grenade into the discussion, I always thought Hot Shots! was less corny than Top Gun). And I'm sure folks had fun making the movie or fiddling with what songs needed to be played (an obscure Queen song! a Dio song that isn't "Holy Diver"! That one Twisted Singer song you know! And, in an indicator of my biases, George Clinton?*). And I'm sure it worked well for those who were still pumped up from Red Dawn [1984]. But good god the movie is a slog, one with dialogue that really does live up to the word "drivel" that just goes on and on for 117 minutes with not nearly enough charm to get away with all of the stuff it tries to pull. Sure, let's have a fake-out character death. Sure, let's have a character who loves playing tapes to do better in the air and also plays a tape of a thought-to-be-dead character. Sure, let's wave the "we have the balls unlike the government" flag. Sure, let's have a race between a plane and a bike (oh but it's not a normal race, it's a special race with special modifications!). Sure, let's have hijinks that are about as believable as the lies you tell your friends in middle school (Hardin and Smith went on to better things and good for them, because they get nothing to do here, and no, the hijinks don't count). And sure, let's have an incident that not only will result in no pushback from a foreign country but also will just be forgotten by America. All of this for a movie where I don't care for any of the characters, particularly with Gedrick, who just comes off as a prissy dweeb that doesn't really make me feel for the plight of this totally tense and not predictable film. To say nothing of Gossett Jr and a performance that sounds like a riff of his Academy Award turn in An Officer and a Gentleman from a few years prior (with little to really motivate anyone) or Suchet (future star of Agatha Christie's Poirot) and a laughable characterization as a villain that exudes little threat. Sometimes the movie looks neat in the air (even with its selections of imagery of what happens when say, firing weapons), but you know damn well where it is going at a certain point in wish fulfillment (blowing up oilfields of what totally isn't meant to be Libya, shooting stuff with dad, or referring to the current president and being confident that they'll help out - which doesn't happen anyway!*). As a whole, Iron Eagle was made to try and give audiences a crowd-pleasing adventure. For those who got to see it before a certain other film involving aerial action, I'm sure it was quite a time. Maybe it's the kind of dumbass movie you watch with a group of friends late at night*. For me, I just didn't care for this movie, as it doesn't manage to come off as anything other than day-old cheese, whether that involves being in the air or being on the ground with these people. 

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*Elders wrote two other films: Simon Sez (1999), which he also directed...and Echelon Conspiracy (2009) Unrelatedly, you might recognize that Family Guy did a whole bit about Brian writing a book that cribbed from the Iron Eagle movies.

*What? By the way, check out Electric Light Orchestra.

*Gotta love the line about referring to Jimmy Carter as a peanut. Gee, real sick burn there. 

*Those days of friends ended years ago, and my patience probably grew exponentially back then - I had to once sit through an unrated version of Sex Drive, for god's sake. Now, with a support network of basically zero, I can stomach anything.

Born on the Fourth of July.

Review #2031: Born on the Fourth of July.

Cast: 

Tom Cruise (Sergeant Ron Kovic; Bryan Larkin as Young Ron), Willem Dafoe (Charlie), Kyra Sedgwick (Donna; Jessica Prunell as Young Donna), Raymond J. Barry (Mr. Kovic), Jerry Levine (Steve Boyer), Frank Whaley (Timmy), Caroline Kava (Mrs. Kovic), Cordelia Gonzalez (Maria Elena - Villa Dulce), Ed Lauter (Legion Commander), John Getz (Marine Major - Vietnam), Beau Starr (Man #2 - Arthur's Bar), and Michael Wincott (Vet #3 - Villa Dulce) Directed by Oliver Stone (#095 - Wall Street, #1090 - Platoon, #1265 - Natural Born Killers, #1523 - Any Given Sunday, and #1595 - Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps)

Review: 

“I’m puzzled by life, horrified by the daily newspaper. The only sane response is re-creation, drama . . . an ordered series of events that arouse pity and terror, to paraphrase Aristotle. Making movies is my way of exorcising demons, of creating an ethos, a philosophy of life. I’d go crazy without fantasy.”

Every so often, I am reminded that my father was a war veteran. I don't have many memories of him talking about his service in Vietnam, aside from once seeing his dog tags and remembering his burial a couple of years ago at a cemetery for veterans. But men are not defined only by if they served for their country or not, they are served by who they are for those who end up alive to talk about it. One such man who found meaning in the (difficult) time that came after his service was Ron Kovic. After he graduated from Massapequa High School in New York (where he was raised to a family of Croatian & Irish ancestry), he quickly volunteered to serve in Vietnam in 1965. He was a member of the United States Marines, for which he made two tours of duty. It was on January 20, 1968, that he was shot and severely wounded that resulted in him being paralyzed from the waist down. After intensive recovery led to his arrival back home, Kovic found curiosity within peace demonstrations, starting in 1970. This happened not long after the events of May 1970 that had seen numerous student protests in universities such as Kent State University and Jackson State University, for which each saw anti-war demonstrators killed (the former by Ohio National Guard, the latter by local patrolmen). Kovic wrote Born on the Fourth of July in the span of over a month in 1974 that was published in 1976 that he stated was written to show people about the "hospitals and the enema room, about why I had become opposed to the war, why I had grown more and more committed to peace and nonviolence." Not long after, Kovic gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention, four years after him and other members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War had protested the Republican Convention (the war did not end until 1975). Even now, with his 77th birthday, Kovic serves as a constant anti-war presence. Cruise, Stone, and Kovic were each nominated for Academy Awards that year for this film (Best Actor, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Picture), with Stone winning for his efforts in direction (don't ask who won Best Picture). Stone would do one further film in what was later called his trilogy of Vietnam War films with Heaven & Earth (1993).

Relating to all of this is the production struggle to get things moving, as there had been interest in doing a film from the very moment Kovic spoke at the DNC, specifically Al Pacino. Oliver Stone, who had served in the United States Army with service from 1967-68, was brought in to try and write for the screenplay in 1977. Incidentally, Kovic served as a consultant on Coming Home (1978), a film involving a disillusioned Vietnam War veteran left in a wheelchair. It was not until the success of Platoon (1986) that Stone could get the chance to write (alongside Kovic) and direct this film. With Platoon, one would find that it argued most that the first casualty in war was innocence. With this film, now one finds how it goes for those who have arrived home after said innocence was lost, not to a hero's welcome but a state of indifference. The illusion of going off to a just war to fight for your country has been shattered into one of unimaginable agony, one where a love of country is warped by some into the idea that they somehow don't love it just because they want to speak up (of course, there are many perspectives when it comes to returning home from war that would shudder at folks who seem to toil in "self-pity" or other characteristics, but that is a different can of worms). As Kovic once said, you aren't meant to avoid conflict and pain in life but instead shape it into something beneficial. So, one minute you may be on the side of wanting to yell folks to "love it or leave it" and the next you may find yourself looking along with Abbie Hoffman (he appears in the film for a moment in a film released months after his suicide at the age of 52). This is conveyed in a mostly factual tale (the character played by Sedgwick is a composite, for example) that is carried near wholesale by the performance of Cruise. The 145-minute runtime is his to carry alone in the odyssey from idealism to the road back from hell, one that requires an actor who can convey the gravity of the situation, and he does a tremendous job here, never striking a false note in those human moments. The burrowing of idealism is handled with honesty with such commitment that Kovic gave Cruise his Bronze Star Medal after filming. The rest of the cast do reasonably well in support from the bits and pieces that arise from before and after time of war, whether that involves protest in Sedgwick or familiarity with Whaley and vulnerable parenting in Barry and Kava. Dafoe actually doesn't show up in the film until the last third of the film (set in Mexico with prostitutes), but he is on point in those moments of animus that only he could bring in a scene where he and Cruise are bickering on a dirt road. As a whole, the movie is a general triumph in communicating what it means to see a person go through the fight of their lives in terms of withering innocence and conscience for what it all means when back home and not "out there". There is no one solution fit for all, but a level of understanding for who one is a virtue that all people can see as worthwhile, American or not. As such, it is a tough sit for audiences in the ways that matter, thanks to the efforts of Cruise, Stone & Kovic.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

Happy Independence Day, folks.