Mercenaires

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!

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 a STV that employs a sizable amount of stock footage to retell the tale told 100 times more professionally in BROKEN ARROW. A fighter pilot (Ice-T, who reads every line with even less inflection than Chuck Norris, if that's possible) fakes his own death in order to eventually get around to stealing a Stealth for a mobbed-up bad guy (the ever-grim Andrew Divoff, once again playing a bad Latino). Ice-T's old compadre, hotshot pilot Costas Mandylor (the new millennium's Michael Pare), is hot on his trail. I should have been suspicious of all the stock footage and cheap-looking miniatures. Sure enough, the director is good old Mr. Recycler, the Dumpster Diver himself, Jim Wynorski. The only good thing about this flick: A black actor plays the U.S. president. Bad news, though: It's Ernie Hudson, who is not believable for one moment as the president. Hudson hasn't been believable in anything since GHOSTBUSTERS, although I do love to watch him get his at the end of THE SUBSTITUTE. And here's a little bit of irony or coincidence: Veteran character actor "Tiny" Lister has a modest role in the flick as a thug. Tiny, who is black, played the U.S. president in THE FIFTH ELEMENT. Lister I can buy as the president.

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:)

Another B action movie with cheap sets, laughable script and mediocre acting. Were we to expect anything different from Wynorski? Why did the makers bother with this one at all. Highlights from this film are the appearances of Ernie Hudson and William Sadler appearing together as President and leading commander respectively.