Active Stealth

I happened to catch this on one of the cable channels a while back, and the previous reviewer is square-on, it is terrible. This film couldn't have cost more than a hundred grand to make. I've seen better home movies. Daniel Baldwin walks through this looking like he has a perpetual hang-over, and is way too overweight to be taken seriously as a military pilot. He must have been desperate for work at the time. I once served in the Army Rangers with Tim Abell, which is why I kept watching this. While he will never be mistaken for Olivier, Tim has made a name for himself as a notable B-actor, and he seems to find a lot of work. However, this is definitely not his finest effort; in fact, the producers should have hired him as a military consultant instead.

Everything in this movie stinks -- from a fat and wasted looking William Baldwin to an insulting inattention to military detail. I don't expect much from mine-run action flicks but this one was incredibly bad, even by my relaxed standards for the genre. For example, as our heroes are flying in to make the rescue (don't ask), a young female soldier asks the Colonel back at the base, "Do you think they have a chance, sir?" to which the Colonel answers, "Not a chance in hell, but they might make it anyway." Perhaps the only trite line I did not hear was, "It's an old trick, but it just might work." Maxwell Smart would have been comfortable in this one.

This is the most unrealistic military movie that I have ever seen in my life. There are too many inconsistencies too mention them all but here are a few: 1. There are no fighter pilots in the Army, let alone in the Army Rangers 2. In the beginning, the Rangers leave behind their dead and wounded comrades. Rangers would NEVER do this. as stated in the Ranger Creed "never shall I leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy" 3. The Ranger colonel is wearing a Ranger battalion scroll. A full bird colonel would not be in a Ranger battalion, the highest ranking officer in a battalion is a Lieutenant Colonel. The colonel would have to be wearing a 75th Ranger Regiment scroll. 4. The colonel is also wearing an 82nd Airborne Division patch. He COULD NOT be serving in both the Rangers and Airborne at the same time. 5. There is no button on a stealth fighter that turns the stealth on and off. The plane is stealth because of its shape and jamming capabilities, not due to some magic force-field or something. This movie is an insult to all Rangers past and present, and all copies should be burned in a public square.

I only caught part of this movie as it was playing on HBO... One thing that caught me, aside from the hat the carrier commander was wearing said SSN, instead of CVN, was that when the pilot of the stealth went to hit his countermeasures, two of the buttons he hit were marked "FLIR" and "DLIR". For anyone who knows even a little about military aircraft, FLIR and DLIR are radars, NOT flares or other countermeasures. This was just a bad movie, even from the few parts I saw. It's an insult to every military pilot out there and to anyone who even knows a little bit about the planes featured. The fact that the F-117 is NOT a 2-seater, let alone has no room for passengers in the back. I can't believe that the producers and others involved would pay no attention whatsoever to detail.

I can't comment on the military discrepancies (I think some 90% of all those watching this film also don't know anything as specific about the army as FLIRs and DLIRs) but the movie has some extremely silly situations in general. For example, take the scene where the two soldiers are playing with cups and a coin in a cell and fool their guard. It wouldn't be funny even in a comedy.

Indeed an appalling movie. When I saw the ridiculous air explosions effects I thought the movie had been made in 1980s. But it was made in around 1999!