Final Mission (1994)

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

A lot of fun.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

FINAL MISSION is one of many straight-to-video thrillers that came out in the wake of TOP GUN and which are deeply indebted to the Tom Cruise movie. This one's a particularly nonsensical and repetitive piece of filmmaking, about a new-fangled virtual reality program being used to train air force pilots. The problem is that those taking part are being killed off one by one, and our protagonist believes that there's a conspiracy behind it.This is strictly paint-by-numbers in terms of direction, writing, and acting. Steve Railsback and Corbin Bernsen are reliable presences in the wacky world of B-movies but even they can do little with their underwritten parts here, and the film as a whole feels quite passe and unexciting. The lead is wooden and the aerial scenes dull. Overall, it's a dud.

Air Force pilot Captain Tom "Outlaw" Waters (Billy Wirth) is part of a secret drug-enhanced virtual-reality flying program under the control of Colonel Anderson and Maurice Vick. He picks up Caitlin Cole at a gas station. The drug from the program is causing him nightmares. Pilot Hound Dog is killed. When Cowboy bombs a policeman, Anderson programs him to commit suicide. Waters suspects foul play and tries to retrieve evidence for General Breslaw (Corbin Bernsen).I don't get what the virtual reality does. At first, I thought they are flying the planes remotely like a drone. In the end, it simply makes the air combat look less exciting. This is even worst than 'Iron Eagle'. The dialog coming out of Outlaw when he picks up Caitlin is cringe-worthy. Luckily, it makes more sense when she turns out to be a secret agent and she wanted to get close to him. Sadly, the rest of the movie makes less sense as it go on. This does have fighter jets but mostly, this is simply bad.

This low budget action film is a good leading role for Billy Wirth in that his character looks good, fights good, drives a sports car and can attract females! The kind of flick I watched as a teenager and thought how cool it would be to emulate the main man! The makers are obviously hoping to attract the viewers who liked Top Gun and the Iron Eagle movies but it reminded me more of Final Approach. The Jet sequences are not awe inspiring, but then again as it is based around "virtual reality" technology so actual flying is not meant to be featured too much anyway. I liked the dialogue to this film, "I don't like tail gators" said by Tom Waters (Wirth) when been too closely followed in his car on in his fighter jet became something of a catch phrase in my house hold. The thriller aspect of the film means it is not something you could watch again like a good classic straight to video action flick but it a solid movie of its kind.