Firefox (1982)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

I saw this film when it originally came out in the theaters...well over 30 years ago. I'd enjoyed it, but times have changed, I have changed and technology has changed...so do I still think it's a decent movie? Well, surprisingly, yes...it still is pretty good.The film is a real change of pace for Clint Eastwood. In this one, he plays a Vietnam War fighter pilot who is called out of reserves to help his country. They need an excellent pilot who can think in Russian to go into the USSR for a covert operation....to steal the Firefox fighter jet!! Why is it that important? Well, because they plane can apparently do about mach 6 AND it has a new neural interface...and it's much more advanced than American fighters. Much of the film consists of the mission getting into the Soviet Union and then to the plane. To me, this was the most interesting part. Then, the final third or so of the film is flying the plane home...and avoiding all the missiles and the other Firefox fighter. This was amazingly made for 1982 but does look a bit dated today. You can't blame anyone for this...CGI technology just has improved tremendously since then. Overall, it's an exciting film and one that is far deeper and more interesting than a standard Eastwood shoot 'em up picture. Worth seeing.By the way, although the film is mostly extremely well made, in the first of many (too many) flashback scenes, Eastwood's Phantom II jet turns into a Thunderchief fighter-bomber. This was a pretty sloppy use of stock footage.

... and by my count this line was spoken at least seven times here.This is a cold war thriller from Clint Eastwood about a Vietnam vet fighter pilot sent undercover and across the iron curtain to steal a new Soviet super-plane. The first two-thirds of the film are a treat, with a lot of tense scenes of Clint and his sympathetic Russian contacts narrowly escaping capture. The last section is where the film loses steam, with a lot of repetitious, dated fx shots of the jet in action.Warren Clarke is memorable as Clint's chief contact. Also featured are Freddie Jones, Ronald Lacey, Nigel Hawthorne, and Kenneth Colley. As you may have noticed, there are no women listed; this is the rare film with no substantial female presence at all. The real star, though, other than Clint, is the fictional MiG31 "Firefox" fighter jet, invisible to radar, capable of Mach 6 speeds as well as full nuclear armament. The film also borders on science fiction with the jet's thought-controlled weapon systems.It is a 50/50 proposition as to whether you will like this one. For me it was fun to see Eastwood stretch his directorial skills in a different direction, and even more fun if you actually remember the cold war...or were even alive during the cold war for that matter.

Continuing my plan to watch every Clint Eastwood movie in order, I come to Firefox (1982)Plot In A Paragraph: A former army pilot (Eastwood) is sent into the Soviet Union on a mission to steal a prototype jet fighter that can be partially controlled by a neuralinkThis is, is a total snooze fest for me. I'm sure it may have its fans here, but it does nothing for me. I enjoy slow burning espionage thrillers, and I love Clint Eastwood, so it's some surprise that I don't enjoy this one. It's just so dull and dreary. I remember my Dad rented this and Blue Thunder (Roy Schieder) on video on the same day, when I was younger and his response was "What a waste of money that was!! They were both shi*t!!"The less said about Clint's characters post traumatic stress syndrome the better!! The CIA man who recruits him explains that the government isn't much worried, because you don't have the syndrome while you're in combat, you see, but only afterwards.Firefox grossed $46 million at the domestic box office to end the year as the 15th highest grossing movie of 1982.

The American's have a problem – the Russians are beating them once again, and that is embarrassing, because totalitarianism isn't supposed to work, where as democracy does. They have a plane that is much better than any of the planes they have, which means that if they decide to duke it out, the might lose – we can't have that can we. So, we do what everybody spoilt brat does when the kid he doesn't like gets something that they want – they get Clint Eastwood to go and steal it.But Clint Eastwood is, well, Clint Eastwood, and he also suffers from Post Traumatic Stress disorder because he was locked up in a bamboo cage in Vietnam. That doesn't matter because he can speak Russian, and he can fly a plane, so he is the perfect person to go an steal this particular plane.So, the first half of the movie Clint wonders around Russia trying not the be Clint (because if he does everybody will know that he is American) but he fails in that attempt because he has to beat up a KGB agent (old habits die hard, don't they Clint), but still, the KGB can't be all that bright because they decide to let Clint go (because, well, he's Clint) and then he manages to disguise himself as a Russian Major, sneak into a heavily guarded airbase, punch out another person (but this time he doesn't kill him because he has an attack of compassion), and steals the plane.So we have the second half of the movie – Clint flying a plane. And he flies the plane, and then flies the plane some more, and then lands the plane in a place where he shouldn't have been able to land the plane, but he can because he is Clint, and then he takes off again, and flies the plane some more, and then the movie ends. Oh, there is a dog fight thrown in for good measure, but that is nothing, because Clint is flying a plane.