Stealth Fighter

Another B action movie with cheap sets, laughable script and mediocre acting. Were we to expect anything different from Wynorski? Why did the makers bother with this one at all. Highlights from this film are the appearances of Ernie Hudson and William Sadler appearing together as President and leading commander respectively.

I don't know who came up with this film, but the casting director and the props person need to be glued together for about a month just to teach them a lesson. President Ernie Hudson? Do you take us for saps? Did anyone notice that during the tense negotiation scene with the bad guys, the President and his cabinet are sitting in what could be characterized as a small grade school classroom? watching a 19 inch tv monitor? while all assembled around a small dinner table? You can actually see them all being visibly uncomfortable, since they all can't fit into the picture at once. Ernie has a look on his face as though the camera crew didn't let him eat any catered donuts that morning--he's hungry and wondering where his life went.

Isn't the President supposed to have a big "situation" room, with padded chairs, big screen tv monitors and a huge conference table for when he negotiates with bad guys? If I were a bad guy, negotiating with Pres. Hudson while his staff all has to stand over his shoulder so they can see the tv would be impetus for all kinds of mischief. I bet when one of them stands up, he better call "fives" or someone takes his chair.

And who wrote Ice-T's lines? I certainly hope it wasn't the Ice-Man himself. Note to self, Ice: any tough-sounding one-liner that ends in the phrase "peach trees" is not all that tough to begin with. Wasn't this guy a rapper? Can't he sound any more intimidating than that?

Ice - T vs. Ernie Hudson in a battle for the world? Perhaps under-water living is the life for me, after all. Do yourself a favor..don't watch this movie. Go rent Ghostbusters, put on an Ice-T CD, and punch yourself in the groin for 2 hours.

STEALTH FIGHTER is a STV that employs a sizable amount of stock footage to retell the tale told 100 times more professionally in BROKEN ARROW. A fighter pilot (Ice-T, who reads every line with even less inflection than Chuck Norris, if that's possible) fakes his own death in order to eventually get around to stealing a Stealth for a mobbed-up bad guy (the ever-grim Andrew Divoff, once again playing a bad Latino). Ice-T's old compadre, hotshot pilot Costas Mandylor (the new millennium's Michael Pare), is hot on his trail. I should have been suspicious of all the stock footage and cheap-looking miniatures. Sure enough, the director is good old Mr. Recycler, the Dumpster Diver himself, Jim Wynorski. The only good thing about this flick: A black actor plays the U.S. president. Bad news, though: It's Ernie Hudson, who is not believable for one moment as the president. Hudson hasn't been believable in anything since GHOSTBUSTERS, although I do love to watch him get his at the end of THE SUBSTITUTE. And here's a little bit of irony or coincidence: Veteran character actor "Tiny" Lister has a modest role in the flick as a thug. Tiny, who is black, played the U.S. president in THE FIFTH ELEMENT. Lister I can buy as the president.

Director Jim Wynorski sure works a lot in tinseltown, but is on autopilot most of the time. This film is typical of his 'espionage / "military action" thriller genre. Generally mediocre acting, writing and direction that harks back to the glory days of Golan/Globus back in the 1980s. Wynorsky sure like military action thrillers, but he'd better get a military advisor one of these days.... the uniforms are either atrocious or worn wrong, the tactics are laughable, the weapons are many times inappropriate for the usage/anachronistic/obsolete, and EVERYONE who ever has worn a beret in a Wynorski film has always worn one three sizes too small!!! Too Funny! A waste of good talent. Costas Mandylor, Hudson, Sadler, Divoff and all the others have done much better in other films. Things to watch for: a) Costas Mandylor's character slips a package of high explosive into his shirt (rather than carry it in some sort of package or bag) when he's on the helicopter riding into battle. b) The usage of stock footage from Christopher Walken's 1980 film "The Dogs of War". In fact this director uses TONS of stock footage from other, larger budgeted films in a lot of his projects. Spotting them is always fun. :) This is a good time killer if you are an afficionado of "bad cinema". If you like well done military action, forget it. The battle sequences are truly bad and the 'commando's carry too little equipment, the nitpicker who is a fan of military action movies will find tons more to criticize! ;)

Satellite ran this stinker late last night and, what seemed on the surface an interesting premise was lost quickly in the poor writing, stiff and otherwise horrible acting, mute extras, and overall lack of direction. Here are but a few examples: there are no colonels in the US Navy; men on the disabled sub were having difficulty breathing, but they were not breathing "carbon monoxide" as the med staff suggested unless their exhaust was leaking into the compartment; lifting off from an arms seller's supposedly isolated base of operations, the Nighthawk rolls along a clearly marked runway, then passes a VOR station, a type of navaid that would assist in identifying the location of this base. How about a GPS receiver that we're to believe also transmits its location, despite it being noted in the dialogue as simply for finding one's position?

Most of the dough must have been blown on the really cool opening sequences that hooks the viewer, these scenes depicting Navy fighters roaring through and taking out an urban area, 'cause from there on out, it's the movie itself that proved stealthy.