Air Strike

(2002) Air Strike ADVENTURE/ WAR/ ACTION

Straight-to-rental and very low budget semi- war movie centering on a group of soldiers that fly Longbow helicopters shown on the poster, and apparently one or two helicopters were shot down while shooting at some terrorist site on some European country full of trees and bushes similar to what one can see from his back yard. This specific action set piece uses old fashion animation and model sets which if anyone were to use the pause button should be able to make out that it looks really fake. Anyways, the movie was originally made in 2002 and not 2004 as RT indicated above which was closest to the time when 9/11 happened and it is intended to rally American soldiers except that the acting was second rate and the action is mediocre at best. The main good guys are the American soldiers of course combating a war on terrorism except that it's on some other foreign land that is farthest from where terrorists reside but was made like that because it may be made during the invasion of Iraq and not Afghanistan. Some helicopter soldiers after a fake unconvincing gunfire shoot out blasting bridges and so forth, and they they appear to be winning this little war since one of the soldiers was chanting U-S-A... U-S-A, until a single terrorist armed with a RPG manages to shoot down two Longbow helicopters equipped with several missile strikes. So they retreat and upon returning to the base happens to be a brother of the main star of the movie who vows revenge on the terrorist whose responsible. He was supposed to be done but because that unfortunate news, he was forced to come out of retirement. The terrorists also succeed in robbing some European bank with absolutely no problem including blowing up the area where they stole money from is one of the ludicrous scenes for a film to finance their terrorism acts which has nothing to do with the them indicates that the story was improvised just because it could even though the main baddie doesn't even need the money because he's also a drug trafficker. Illogical and terrible with small glimpses underneath young girls skirts/ dresses while dancing. The movie itself looks like it could've been directed by Roger Cormon himself. Avoid at all costs BOMB.

The movie is utterly predictable. The story is black and white, good guys vs. bad guys, no in between. ALL the cliches have been used in this movie, cheesy lines and all...

It's like they took some of the best lines of good classic american action movies, and made the actors recite them, one after the other... I mean, there's a scene where they're in the middle of enemy fire, and yet they stop to deliver an exchange of like 4-5 lines that completely useless to the story line, but i guess some writer thought it was "cool".

I'm surprised they didn't include the lines "I'll be back" or "Yippi-ka-yeah!", they put all the others...

and of course, all the storyline cliches were there... The woman that shows up in a squadron of men, they make fun because she's a woman, she proves herself to be just as worthy, one of the guys falls in love with her. And at the end, she even goes to rescue the guy and messes up and so our hero has to rescue her back... UGH!!

and not to forget the shot of the chopper flying home with the bright red sunset behind it and the fuel smoldering in the sun...

then the chopper returns home and they are greeted by all their army buddies, just like in Top Gun...

but then, they start chanting "USA! USA!" what was that????? i mean, even in the best, most patriotic movies they don't do that, especially since this wasn't even a WAR where the USA won against another country... They went to bust a drug lord's cartel!!! How is that a victory for the USA???? and who goes around chanting "USA! USA!", rather than hugging and shaking hands with your friends that have just come back from a dangerous mission!!!

This movie is absolutely incredible. It essentially includes every crap and cliché about "badass Americans" (Go! Go! Go! Shoot! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!) Approximately 1/3 of the movie takes part in pubs in meaningless macho pilots discussions "who had bigger balls", "who has bigger balls" or "who will have bigger balls" (including pretty blonde - which is actually pretty intelligent - and she is general's daughter too - and she is amazing female Apache pilot - of course with some stress syndrome which makes her somehow less usable than real U-S-A macho pilot). Approximately 1/3 of movie scenes do have BIG U-S-A FLAGS in background with big U-S-A talks in foreground ("terorists" making fun from "flag-wavers", letters of dead soldiers pathetically read by officer and such patriotic-anger inducing crap). The last 1/3 of the movie consists of explosions and poorly animated Apache sequences. It is very strange for such hyper patriotic movie but it seems to be pretty anti-patriotic sometimes as officers do smoke Havana cigars (isn't it still illegal in US?). The pilots seem to be pretty inept too, because multiple Apaches are shot down with RPG-7 which is actually anti tank-short range weapon. It is pretty hard to hit helicopter with something like this, essentially the target must not maneuver at all and shooter must be very good too. These "U-S-A" ace pilots do fly like sitting ducks and are constantly shot down with bunch of guys with wool hats, AK-47s and RPGs. Let's hope these terrorists never get hands over actual anti air weapons, or the "U-S-A" is doomed I think... Well this movie seems to be parody of itself. I think it was written by some anti-American leftist propaganda intellectual, as it is really poor, stupid and technically complete inept. No, I do believe no American is actually so stupid and inept as these "U-S-A heroes". I do hope that filmmakers have been used as practice targets because this is really an incredibly huge insult to Apache pilots.

I happen to have read the original draft of the script and in all fairness to the screenwriter (who always get blamed when a movie is bad), the screenplay was very good even though he had to write the script around stock footage of Apache helicopter action scenes from other movies. Despite the fact that the director initially fought for the script to be the best possible in terms of story and character development, once the filmmakers went on location in Bulgaria the script was drastically changed, and coupled with bad acting choices, hack directing (one cannot blame a director when saddled with an 18 day shooting schedule and an impossible budget - considering John Woo had 192 days to shoot Hard Boiled, 35 days just for the hospital action scene alone) the result on the screen became a compromised excuse for a movie showing no one really cared. Sadly, the shell-shocked writer confided in me that he should have taken his name of the film, but unfortunately it was too late by the time he was allowed to see it. At no time during the shooting was he ever consulted regarding any of the changes, but alas, such is the fate of most Hollywood writers, powerless unless they get lucky and blessed to have their scripts directed by a writer-friendly director (i.e, the Rob Reiner, Peter Weir, Ron Howard, Edward Zwig, Martin Campbell, etc.) who not only are able to deliver the vision of a script as written, but often enhance on it with brilliant directing, casting, eliciting excellent performances from their actors, and if allowed enough time, sizzling action.

I am watching this crap of film on TV and can not believe that some American film company can make this kind of film.Bad scenes of action,film with name "Air strike" without ANY real action war scene with helies?Even uniforms doesn't look like American!!Action is placed in imagined country name Petrovia?!What???Same animated scenes of helicopters in battle repeated several times...This film is insult for intelligence of average person.I really would like to see the budget for this film and how much money did it earned.I am still so shocked that I caught myself in serious thinking to contact the director or writer of screenplay,or even company which made this film with kindliest ask:Don't make this rubbish anymore!!!!Please!!!