Stealth Fighter

Director Jim Wynorski sure works a lot in tinseltown, but is on autopilot most of the time. This film is typical of his 'espionage / "military action" thriller genre. Generally mediocre acting, writing and direction that harks back to the glory days of Golan/Globus back in the 1980s. Wynorsky sure like military action thrillers, but he'd better get a military advisor one of these days.... the uniforms are either atrocious or worn wrong, the tactics are laughable, the weapons are many times inappropriate for the usage/anachronistic/obsolete, and EVERYONE who ever has worn a beret in a Wynorski film has always worn one three sizes too small!!! Too Funny! A waste of good talent. Costas Mandylor, Hudson, Sadler, Divoff and all the others have done much better in other films. Things to watch for: a) Costas Mandylor's character slips a package of high explosive into his shirt (rather than carry it in some sort of package or bag) when he's on the helicopter riding into battle. b) The usage of stock footage from Christopher Walken's 1980 film "The Dogs of War". In fact this director uses TONS of stock footage from other, larger budgeted films in a lot of his projects. Spotting them is always fun. :) This is a good time killer if you are an afficionado of "bad cinema". If you like well done military action, forget it. The battle sequences are truly bad and the 'commando's carry too little equipment, the nitpicker who is a fan of military action movies will find tons more to criticize! ;)

"Stealth Fighter" is perhaps one of the worst low-budget espionage films concievable. Ice-T's portrayal of a navy fighter pilot borders on ridiculous even comedic as he brings unbelivable adolescent "gang" behavior and language to the film. What happens when the gangsters of New Jack City meet political terrorists? You get "Stealth Fighter" a movie that is almost insulting to the intelligence. How is it possible that a pilot can be concurrently enlisted in both the Air Force AND Navy, be a Navy SEAL, and lastly, be qualified for all major US aircraft? And with all the intelligence neccessary to do all of those tasks, we're to believe that Ice-T's character can't even pronounce the words "seven-seven-seven" with good english? (Ice-T pronounces seven as 'tevin-tevin-tevin.') Not to mention that this film excessively steals stock footage heavily from such movies as Iron Eagle, Interceptor, Clear and Present Danger, US Navy Seals, Diamonds are Forever and includes a battle sequence constructed entirely from edited footage of the bombing scene from Flight of The Intruder, where the only noticeable difference is Brad Johnson and Williem Dafoe have been conviently edited from the scene. The "stealth" F-117 which is stolen from the US gov't is actually the prop used as the "Manta" transport plane from Executive Decision. What is supposed to be a high-tech Los Angeles class submarine is actually the WWII era submarine set featured in Down Periscope. And the center attraction, a stolen SDI satellite, is actually stock footage of the killer satellite from James Bond "Diamonds Are Forever." To make matters worse, the footage editors didn't even bother to remove the original on-screen text from US Navy Seals in the carrier scene...the text that says "Off The Coast of Lebanon" does not match the on screen text used earlier and for the rest of "Stealth Fighter" - it's like comparing italic Times New Roman to Arial font. There are way too many character flaws, plot inconsistencies, and easily recognizable props and footage from other movies included in "Stealth Fighter" to make it believable.

Satellite ran this stinker late last night and, what seemed on the surface an interesting premise was lost quickly in the poor writing, stiff and otherwise horrible acting, mute extras, and overall lack of direction. Here are but a few examples: there are no colonels in the US Navy; men on the disabled sub were having difficulty breathing, but they were not breathing "carbon monoxide" as the med staff suggested unless their exhaust was leaking into the compartment; lifting off from an arms seller's supposedly isolated base of operations, the Nighthawk rolls along a clearly marked runway, then passes a VOR station, a type of navaid that would assist in identifying the location of this base. How about a GPS receiver that we're to believe also transmits its location, despite it being noted in the dialogue as simply for finding one's position?

Most of the dough must have been blown on the really cool opening sequences that hooks the viewer, these scenes depicting Navy fighters roaring through and taking out an urban area, 'cause from there on out, it's the movie itself that proved stealthy.

Apparently there were more affects from the Y2K problem than we knew about, like this movie made in 2000 for example.

When it came on TV early this morning I came prepared with my IMDb.com in hand. So I already knew it was a stupid movie, but I wanted to see what the reviewers were talking about.

But I won't go into it, you really have to be at least a "Colonel" in the Navy to grasp the technology in this movie. As a prior Marine Corps Officer, I was sick to my stomach to see the supposed Marine Corps personnel in the "White House", with their bathrobe like uniforms and long hair. They could have hired the lowliest Private in the USMC to provide technical guidance at $45 a day, and he/she would have fixed almost every technical flaw of the military innacuracies.

And when the "Colonel" of the Navy reported to the President, I pretty much had it. The movie is still on, but I cannot watch it anymore.

BTW, if you want to see a really good "flying" movie, that was made using a lot of stock footage from an earlier movie, watch Dawn Patrol (1938) with Errol Flynn. Its hard to believe that movies 60+ years earlier than this one could still be more accurate, AND expertly use footage from other movies. But I suppose the studio owned the earlier movies back then, as opposed to this movie that just stole them.

Aside from technology, acting was better back then too! Oh well, read the other reviews, they do a much better job then me. (p.s., I see that IMDb pointed out IMDb as a possible spelling mistake:)

This film is quite possibly one of the worst ever made - Ice T can't act or deliver a line (but that isn't necessarily just in this film - Ya know wot I'm sayin'), the fighter plane scenes are stolen from Flight of the Intruder, basically this is a cack version of Broken Arrow (quality film)! The "plot" is totally lacking - I only ended up watching it all the way through just to see if it could get any worse - which it consequently did! The only good thing in this film was Erika Eleniak who did manage to cheer me up for a bit of this epic eyesore! So in summary if you see this film in a rental store destroy it so no-one else loses an hour and a half of their life watching it!