D: Clint Eastwood
Warner Bros./Malpaso (Clint
Eastwood)
USA 🇺🇸 1982
136 mins
Action/Adventure/Thriller
W: Alex Lasker & Wendell Willman [based on
the novel by Craig Thomas]
DP: Bruce Surtees
Ed: Ferris Webster & Ron
Sprang
Mus: Maurice Jarre
Clint Eastwood (Maj. Mitchell Gant), Freddie
Jones (Kenneth Aubrey), David Huffman (Buckholz), Warren Clarke (Pavel Upenskoy)
A curious choice for Clint Eastwood to take
on, both as a director and star, failing to impress as neither. He plays the lead in this spy thriller as an ex-Vietnam pilot who must sneak into Russian enemy lines to steal a
supersonic jet which is flown using the pilot's thoughts.
As an action-adventure film, it doesn't have
much action or adventure and as a thriller it's far too light on the thrills and spills, focusing more on Eastwood's characters fractured psyche and haunting flashbacks, the
modelwork and special effects are also quite poor having waited half the film for the titular jet to finally appear (and the fact that over 90% of the film's entire budget went to
financing the visual effects, which don't even look particularly great).
4/10