DVD Review: Firefox
Jan. 5th, 2004 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalLord, sometimes I miss the 80's. Not only was the Soviet Union considerably less crazy than Al Quieda, it made a perfectly hissable villain in spy thrillers. As opposed to modern terrorism, where you have to walk a fine line between glorifiying terrorists to make intriuging villains, or risk engaging in mindless Muslim bashing.
Which brings us to "Firefox" Clint Eastwood's Cold War spy thriller (based on the Craig Thomas novel of the same name), made in the last few years that the USSR made a credible adversary for the United States.
Clint directs and stars as Mitchell Gant, mentally unstable jet pilot and Vietnam vet, who is called back into active duty by the CIA and MI6 to steal the MiG-31 Firefox, an advanced Russian fighter plane that is not only radar invisible, but can be controlled by thought waves and fly at Mach Six! [1]
Despite the fantastic premise, the film comes across as less science fiction than Cold War thriller in the likes of John Le Carre. This is aided by the first 90 minutes, which consists of a cat and mouse game as Gant is ferreted across the Soviet Union by Russian dissidents, while the KGB (led by Jonathan Pryce), dog his movements and add up the clues as to what his goal is. These scenes (with Vienna passing as Moscow), are appropriately tense, with the unreliable novice-spy Gant being sheperded by people he doesn't really know, and who make it clear just how much of a liability he is to them.
The actual theft of the Firefox is where the film unfortuately shows it's age. John Dykstra's effects where state of the art twenty years ago, but the obvious matte lines when the Firefox is flying in the daylight, not to mention the clumsy dogfight scene, hurt rather than help the film today. Oddly, it's the moments when an obvious model is being used (such as the landing on the ice floe) that carry over better, with my suspension of disbelief allowing for such obvious modelwork, rather than wincing as the Firefox model flies across a sped-up background of real arctic mountains. Fortunately Eastwood appears to have been aware of the quality of effects too, and intercuts scenes of Gant in his cockpit with the Soviet military trying desperately to track his plane, rather than trying to give the audience a series of "Gee Wow!" shots like in modern effects driven films.
The DVD itself isn't anything remarkble. The film transfer is acceptable, and the sound has some modest attempts at 3-d effects. Extras are paltry, with a French subtitle track, and a 30 minute Director's Profile that originally appeared on the BBC, and follows Eastwood's career in a general way, appearing here only because it interviewed him during the filming of Firefox. [2]
Verdict: Buy it if you used to love the movie when you were younger, or if you're a die-hard Eastwood fan.
[1] While the F-117 Stealth Fighter was in the testing stages at this point, the general public had no idea in 1983 that radar invisibility was actually possible. And anyway in Thomas' book it was postulated that some kind of radar reflective paint made it possible, rather than fancy composites and wierd angles.
[2] It's absolutely wierd to hear, in this post-Tarantino world, an interviewer ask Clint about the violence nature of his films, given that "Dirty Harry" seems positively mild compared to something like "Kill Bill".
Which brings us to "Firefox" Clint Eastwood's Cold War spy thriller (based on the Craig Thomas novel of the same name), made in the last few years that the USSR made a credible adversary for the United States.
Clint directs and stars as Mitchell Gant, mentally unstable jet pilot and Vietnam vet, who is called back into active duty by the CIA and MI6 to steal the MiG-31 Firefox, an advanced Russian fighter plane that is not only radar invisible, but can be controlled by thought waves and fly at Mach Six! [1]
Despite the fantastic premise, the film comes across as less science fiction than Cold War thriller in the likes of John Le Carre. This is aided by the first 90 minutes, which consists of a cat and mouse game as Gant is ferreted across the Soviet Union by Russian dissidents, while the KGB (led by Jonathan Pryce), dog his movements and add up the clues as to what his goal is. These scenes (with Vienna passing as Moscow), are appropriately tense, with the unreliable novice-spy Gant being sheperded by people he doesn't really know, and who make it clear just how much of a liability he is to them.
The actual theft of the Firefox is where the film unfortuately shows it's age. John Dykstra's effects where state of the art twenty years ago, but the obvious matte lines when the Firefox is flying in the daylight, not to mention the clumsy dogfight scene, hurt rather than help the film today. Oddly, it's the moments when an obvious model is being used (such as the landing on the ice floe) that carry over better, with my suspension of disbelief allowing for such obvious modelwork, rather than wincing as the Firefox model flies across a sped-up background of real arctic mountains. Fortunately Eastwood appears to have been aware of the quality of effects too, and intercuts scenes of Gant in his cockpit with the Soviet military trying desperately to track his plane, rather than trying to give the audience a series of "Gee Wow!" shots like in modern effects driven films.
The DVD itself isn't anything remarkble. The film transfer is acceptable, and the sound has some modest attempts at 3-d effects. Extras are paltry, with a French subtitle track, and a 30 minute Director's Profile that originally appeared on the BBC, and follows Eastwood's career in a general way, appearing here only because it interviewed him during the filming of Firefox. [2]
Verdict: Buy it if you used to love the movie when you were younger, or if you're a die-hard Eastwood fan.
[1] While the F-117 Stealth Fighter was in the testing stages at this point, the general public had no idea in 1983 that radar invisibility was actually possible. And anyway in Thomas' book it was postulated that some kind of radar reflective paint made it possible, rather than fancy composites and wierd angles.
[2] It's absolutely wierd to hear, in this post-Tarantino world, an interviewer ask Clint about the violence nature of his films, given that "Dirty Harry" seems positively mild compared to something like "Kill Bill".
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no subject
Date: 2004-01-05 07:57 pm (UTC)Mach 6 seems a bit high though...
no subject
Date: 2004-01-06 05:43 am (UTC)A top speed of Mach Six (just Mach 5 in the book) is way too high though. Even the SR-71 can just do Mach 3 or so. For Mach Six you need an X-15 rocket plane (and even that melted a bit after setting a speed record of Mach 6.7).