Active Stealth

I happened to catch this on one of the cable channels a while back, and the previous reviewer is square-on, it is terrible. This film couldn't have cost more than a hundred grand to make. I've seen better home movies. Daniel Baldwin walks through this looking like he has a perpetual hang-over, and is way too overweight to be taken seriously as a military pilot. He must have been desperate for work at the time. I once served in the Army Rangers with Tim Abell, which is why I kept watching this. While he will never be mistaken for Olivier, Tim has made a name for himself as a notable B-actor, and he seems to find a lot of work. However, this is definitely not his finest effort; in fact, the producers should have hired him as a military consultant instead.

Everything in this movie stinks -- from a fat and wasted looking William Baldwin to an insulting inattention to military detail. I don't expect much from mine-run action flicks but this one was incredibly bad, even by my relaxed standards for the genre. For example, as our heroes are flying in to make the rescue (don't ask), a young female soldier asks the Colonel back at the base, "Do you think they have a chance, sir?" to which the Colonel answers, "Not a chance in hell, but they might make it anyway." Perhaps the only trite line I did not hear was, "It's an old trick, but it just might work." Maxwell Smart would have been comfortable in this one.

This is the most unrealistic military movie that I have ever seen in my life. There are too many inconsistencies too mention them all but here are a few: 1. There are no fighter pilots in the Army, let alone in the Army Rangers 2. In the beginning, the Rangers leave behind their dead and wounded comrades. Rangers would NEVER do this. as stated in the Ranger Creed "never shall I leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy" 3. The Ranger colonel is wearing a Ranger battalion scroll. A full bird colonel would not be in a Ranger battalion, the highest ranking officer in a battalion is a Lieutenant Colonel. The colonel would have to be wearing a 75th Ranger Regiment scroll. 4. The colonel is also wearing an 82nd Airborne Division patch. He COULD NOT be serving in both the Rangers and Airborne at the same time. 5. There is no button on a stealth fighter that turns the stealth on and off. The plane is stealth because of its shape and jamming capabilities, not due to some magic force-field or something. This movie is an insult to all Rangers past and present, and all copies should be burned in a public square.

ACTIVE STEALTH is a military action film from B-movie purveyor Fred Olen Ray, who along with Charles Band must have made some of the silliest (and cheapest) movies of recent years. This one's a predictable action flick in which American stealth pilots go after the warlord of a made-up South American country and must rescue some kidnapped US hostages in the mean time.

As is the norm for one of these films - most of which seem to have been directed by Ray or Jim Wynorski - a lot of the more impressive action highlights have been lifted from other movies, CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER among them; this accounts for pretty much all of the aerial combat in this film. The stuff on the ground is a little more fun, with lots of cheesy macho dialogue, chest-thumping, and slow-motion shoot-outs with various goons.

The film features a laidback performance from Daniel Baldwin (recently of CELEBRITY BIG BROTHER fame, which says everything, and the least famous of the four brothers) as the tough hotshot, and he's supposed by a cast of the usual B-movie stereotypes. Watch out for a couple of old-timers, Andrew Stevens and Fred Williamson, playing officials. ACTIVE STEALTH is a pretty poor film but it's never boring, so it's far from the worst of this genre.

I liked the movie except for two things. One, of the guys in the explosion scene, didn't "blow up" like he was supposed to. He fell forward about a second late. Secondly the number they used for the aircraft carrier was wrong. SSN's are submarines, not carriers. Any Navy/Military buff ( and this films target audience) probably picked up on that. It makes the director look bad as they didn't do their research . Other than that I liked it. I love the twists the film took at the end. And I can also agree somewhat with the earlier William Baldwin comment. He looked a little off in some scenes but maybe I'm just picky. Who knows. Also I thought they kept that agent's character a little too underplayed. It didn't make sense.

It seemed to me that she was just the "token woman" at times.