It was interesting in a number of ways to see the Vietnam War from the perspective of bomber pilots (as opposed to fighter pilots and ground troops, stories we've all seen/heard/ read many times by now). But somehow this movie just falls flat. It is not engaging. Suspension of disbelief is very difficult to achieve. Even the court martial scene comes across as wooden and preachy, despite trying to make very valid points. The lead actor, the relatively unknown Brad Johnson, who looks remarkably like a young Tom Berenger, is quite *believable* as a navy pilot - as the adoptive son of a USAF F-111 pilot I grew up around men just like this - but the performance simply isn't compelling. In the end we really don't *care* about these characters or their actions. Tom Sizemore (long before he was a known Hollywood "face"), Ving Rhames (with a full head of hair), and Willem Dafoe are basically just wasted in this movie; their roles have very little room for growth or expression. Danny Glover's frequently humorous turn as the CO is faintly rewarding, and a very young David Schwimmer makes a kind of cute appearance. But when all is said and done this movie comes across as having very little in the way of a real point. The feel-good, triumphant music that floods us toward the end, as the planes are launching off the carrier, comes across as just downright silly and, worse yet, patriotically manipulative. There is also a marked lack of complexity when it comes to the Vietnamese. Except for one very brief moment when a drunken Johnson looks up, after falling in the mud, at a family of locals, whose faces seem to show a mixture of fear, disapproval and indifference, the indigenous population don't have any roles or presence, other than as either whores or largely faceless enemies. On a positive note, the visual effects are actually quite impressive for the early '90s, especially in the bombing raid on Hanoi. Many CGI attempts at realistically depicting missiles and aircraft have done worse than the apparently model-based effects in this film.
Review of Flight of the Intruder
