Air Strike

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 rented this DVD for $1 as a weekly, and I still feel ripped off. I cannot imagine the production company made a profit from this film? I hope DEJ productions make a better film next time.

Also, it looks bad when they use poor computer animation for some of their helicopter scenes.

There seemed to be a lacking of logic in the way the soldiers and pilots carried out their missions. Poor editing too, probably just rushed. But what can I expect for $1.

You may be able to get a refund on your money, but that is 95 minutes of your life you will never see again.

The Nu Image film company can often be depended on to deliver some good, mindless action in one of their straight-to-video movies, but this particular one drops the ball in EVERY aspect that you can think of. You shouldn't be surprised that there is no one in the cast that you recognize - not only was the movie apparently too cheap to hire even a faded B movie star, but the dialogue is often so bad that even a faded B movie star would think this movie would destroy their reputation. Needless to say, the unexperienced no-name cast is incredibly bad at spouting off the inane dialogue. What about action, surely there must be at the very least some good, mindless action? Nope. A lot of the footage of the flying Apache helicopters is obviously footage from the major studio movie "Firebirds", cut together with the new footage to make things absolutely unexciting. Pathetic explosions and bad use of slow motion are the icing on this turd-flavored cake. If you were a willing participant in the making of this movie, shame! Shame!

I believe this is a major accomplishment by Hollywood. The first widely distributed commercial movie directed and written entirely by 12 year olds.

The clichés are overwhelming, the editing seems to have been done by a lazy slob - especially apparent during a scene where top army brass watch a helicopter goes down on his monitor screen - who the heck was the stupid jerk holding a camera 50 feet from a battle helicopter in a jungle during combat?

Last words: if Americans really do act the way they are portrayed in this movie, it is no wonder that many hate them so much.

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.