Stealth

Day 3 of the Malcolm-has-a-week-off-and-is-spending-it-at-the-cinema-athon.
Today's film was great if you've always wanted to see a film that was a mix of Top Gun, Short Circuit, 2001, Firefox, Behind Enemy Lines, Charmed and Iron Eagle whatever number it went up to.

3 ace pilots; one white male, one white female and one black male (so that's the politically correct executive happy) are partnered up, not with a gay welsh atheist, but with a super intelligent computerised pilot which develops a mind of it's own when zapped by lightning (why wasn't this picked up in testing?). Rocking the status quo and the power-of-three mentality the pilots get a little bent out of shape, the black guy literally when he flies (nicely in slow motion I might add) into a cliff. Anyway, the computer robot decides to ignore everything he's told and seeks to blow up Russia on his own (because he's good at that).

So the film goes off all "kill the robot at all costs" and then guess what, the robot becomes friendly and how convenient that they built the thing to carry a human passenger. Without that plot device the white male would have been stuck in Alaska; which they flew to in a matter of minutes from the Indian Ocean with just the single fuel stop at a zeppelin that was able to maintain a perfect circular flying formation for no apparent reason other than to have a circular explosion when the computer plane decides to blow it up.

A side story sees the woman survive a several hundred foot drop into North Korea with just a few cuts and scratches after she ejects from her plane over North Korea. For a country used to war you'd think their pursuit dogs would be used to explosions. Alas it looks like the one dog sent to chase the woman down saw fit to bolt it as soon as the sound "boom" was heard. How lucky she must have felt to have seen that!

This was supposed to be one of the big summer blockbusters but without any big names to carry the movie it falls flat on its face. In hindsight seeing the film was directed by the guy who gave us such wonderful films as XXX (the original one) and Fast and Furious, I should have known better. Having it as the tagline on the movie poster should have sent alarm bells ringing but then it did have Jessica Biel in it and she was worth tolerating Trinity Blade for. Could it be any coincidence that in that film she was partnered by 2 guys and it bombed too?

Ah well.