Review: Airwolf
Feb. 3rd, 2006 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalWell, more a series of jumbled impressions than a review, but here we go.
I wanted to be Archangel when I was a kid. Okay, he was half-blind and a gimp, but he worked for a super-secret spy agency, dressed in a white suit, flew around in a white helicopter, probably drove a white Jag, and was constantly attended by his Girl Friday who was dressed (of course) in white. Oh, and he was friends with a guy who'd stolen a super cool black helicopter with retractable machine guns and missles that could do Mach Two and take on stock footage MiG's like nobody's business.
Hey, I was fourteen, gimme a break...
Yeah, Airwolf went rapidly downhill from the second season on, as Jan Michael-Vincent's drug and drinking habits took a toll on his limited acting abilities, and the scripts went from mildly wild techno-thrillers to drippy plots more suited to Knight Rider. But for a while there it was the coolest show on the air, and I loved it. So when the first season finally became availible on DVD, I grabbed it.
First impressions of the DVD weren't encouraging. "Bare-bones" describes the package nicely. You get two-doublesided discs with absolutely no extras except for Spanish and French subtitles. Heck even the menus are boring, with no animation and not even the famous theme song playing. But I gamely popped the pilot episode in for a viewing to give it a try.
Overall, it wasn't bad. Moments of it were pure 80's cheeze, but taking it as a fun little adventure show, it worked. Some points:
Positives:
1. Airwolf itself. These days the poor bird would likely be a static ground model and a CGI critter when it took to the air. Here it's a real damned helicopter, based off a Bell executive chopper, with high-tech additions courtesy of designer Andy Probert, who was also responsible for the updated versions of the USS Enterprise in ST:TMP and Next Generation. For the pilot episode the producers don't skimp on showing it off either. We see it flying over the ocean, across the deserts ofCalifornia Lybia, and in a marvelous set piece at the beginning just before it is stolen by it's psychotic designer. She's beautiful to see.
2. The action. Did I mention we get to see Airwolf flying and fighting a lot in this pilot? The opening sequence has Airwolf proving itself in an insane live-fire exercise where it dodges missles, fights off two other helicopters (also real birds, not models), and ends with it blasting the hell out of the testing facility (part of which had to have been built out in the desrt where the bird was flying. That was the real deal hovering outside the windows, not a back-projected image.) Whenever the teleplay slows down, we also get to see Moffet take it for a bit more villanry.
3. The characters. I've already mentioned Archangel. He's a trifle wierd, but Alex Cord has the gravitas to pull off Archangel without making whole "Dresses in white" schtick look silly. String, OTOH, is a well designed character, but JMV is obviously at his acting limits trying to pull him off. I half suspect his substance abuse stemmed from trying to match the writers and producers expectations. Dominic is a mixed bag. He's the semi-comic foil to String's deadly earnestness, but in Earnest Borgnine's hands Dom manages to be more amusing than irritating.
4. The Villian. Moffet is an absolutely lovely villian, and much more hardcore than you'd expect to see in a telefilm from the mid-80's. He's practically at Hannibal Lecter levels of psycho, dressing up like Laurence of Arabia, cooling off by shooting coins out a hapless poolboy's hand, and dragging nubile FIRM agents out in the desert for a little torture/execution. And of course the actor is British, and so manages to pull it off without even breaking a sweat.
Negatives:
1. The women. Airwolf is (much like any other technothriller) a boy's world. Women are given a veneer of professionalism, just to have it stripped away as they enter the inevitable love affair with the hero. The relationship between String and Gabrielle is no different, and she comes to an utterly rotten end, practically painting a target on her forehead when she says, "I'm not like the others, I'm not going to die" (String has a, ahem, string of dead/missing relatives behind him, including his parents, his brother, and of course the first love of his life).
2. The stock footage. Look, if you're going to send Airwolf after a French Mirage fighter, don't put up stock footage of a MiG-19, and then compound the error by having Airwolf's targeting computer identify it with a MiG-23's graphic. *headdesk*
3. The pure 80's Komedy moment, when (to introduce the background info of String and Dom running a Hollywood helicopter stunt business) we have a ten minute diversion as String humilates the standard Arrogant Actor Who Thinks He Knows Better Than the Stunt Coordinator. It's painful to watch, even as we admire the real chopper pilot who manages to fly his bird through Universal's backlot with destroying it.
4. Two Words: Arabian Discotech.
I wanted to be Archangel when I was a kid. Okay, he was half-blind and a gimp, but he worked for a super-secret spy agency, dressed in a white suit, flew around in a white helicopter, probably drove a white Jag, and was constantly attended by his Girl Friday who was dressed (of course) in white. Oh, and he was friends with a guy who'd stolen a super cool black helicopter with retractable machine guns and missles that could do Mach Two and take on stock footage MiG's like nobody's business.
Hey, I was fourteen, gimme a break...
Yeah, Airwolf went rapidly downhill from the second season on, as Jan Michael-Vincent's drug and drinking habits took a toll on his limited acting abilities, and the scripts went from mildly wild techno-thrillers to drippy plots more suited to Knight Rider. But for a while there it was the coolest show on the air, and I loved it. So when the first season finally became availible on DVD, I grabbed it.
First impressions of the DVD weren't encouraging. "Bare-bones" describes the package nicely. You get two-doublesided discs with absolutely no extras except for Spanish and French subtitles. Heck even the menus are boring, with no animation and not even the famous theme song playing. But I gamely popped the pilot episode in for a viewing to give it a try.
Overall, it wasn't bad. Moments of it were pure 80's cheeze, but taking it as a fun little adventure show, it worked. Some points:
Positives:
1. Airwolf itself. These days the poor bird would likely be a static ground model and a CGI critter when it took to the air. Here it's a real damned helicopter, based off a Bell executive chopper, with high-tech additions courtesy of designer Andy Probert, who was also responsible for the updated versions of the USS Enterprise in ST:TMP and Next Generation. For the pilot episode the producers don't skimp on showing it off either. We see it flying over the ocean, across the deserts of
2. The action. Did I mention we get to see Airwolf flying and fighting a lot in this pilot? The opening sequence has Airwolf proving itself in an insane live-fire exercise where it dodges missles, fights off two other helicopters (also real birds, not models), and ends with it blasting the hell out of the testing facility (part of which had to have been built out in the desrt where the bird was flying. That was the real deal hovering outside the windows, not a back-projected image.) Whenever the teleplay slows down, we also get to see Moffet take it for a bit more villanry.
3. The characters. I've already mentioned Archangel. He's a trifle wierd, but Alex Cord has the gravitas to pull off Archangel without making whole "Dresses in white" schtick look silly. String, OTOH, is a well designed character, but JMV is obviously at his acting limits trying to pull him off. I half suspect his substance abuse stemmed from trying to match the writers and producers expectations. Dominic is a mixed bag. He's the semi-comic foil to String's deadly earnestness, but in Earnest Borgnine's hands Dom manages to be more amusing than irritating.
4. The Villian. Moffet is an absolutely lovely villian, and much more hardcore than you'd expect to see in a telefilm from the mid-80's. He's practically at Hannibal Lecter levels of psycho, dressing up like Laurence of Arabia, cooling off by shooting coins out a hapless poolboy's hand, and dragging nubile FIRM agents out in the desert for a little torture/execution. And of course the actor is British, and so manages to pull it off without even breaking a sweat.
Negatives:
1. The women. Airwolf is (much like any other technothriller) a boy's world. Women are given a veneer of professionalism, just to have it stripped away as they enter the inevitable love affair with the hero. The relationship between String and Gabrielle is no different, and she comes to an utterly rotten end, practically painting a target on her forehead when she says, "I'm not like the others, I'm not going to die" (String has a, ahem, string of dead/missing relatives behind him, including his parents, his brother, and of course the first love of his life).
2. The stock footage. Look, if you're going to send Airwolf after a French Mirage fighter, don't put up stock footage of a MiG-19, and then compound the error by having Airwolf's targeting computer identify it with a MiG-23's graphic. *headdesk*
3. The pure 80's Komedy moment, when (to introduce the background info of String and Dom running a Hollywood helicopter stunt business) we have a ten minute diversion as String humilates the standard Arrogant Actor Who Thinks He Knows Better Than the Stunt Coordinator. It's painful to watch, even as we admire the real chopper pilot who manages to fly his bird through Universal's backlot with destroying it.
4. Two Words: Arabian Discotech.
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Date: 2006-02-03 09:50 pm (UTC)