Stealth (PG-13)
Mike:
Scott:
Scott: Tonight's movie review is Stealth
, the latest in a long line of unoriginal movies. This movie is about a drone airplane piloted by Artificial Intelligence, HAL... I mean Eddie (EDI), going haywire and threatening to kill bunches of people. If this movie summary sounds familiar, that's only because it has been done so many times before. 2001: A Space Odyssey and War Games come to mind.
Mike: There's some Top Gun and Firefox thrown in as well.
Scott: Oh yes, this was like a collage of movies rolled into one.
Mike: People keep telling us that we can't like every movie we see. This one proves that!
Scott: And here we go, a movie I don't like AND you don't like. It's funny though, the movie wasn't too bad until about half way through, and then it tanked.
Mike: I was afraid it was going to be cheesy from the previews and I was right. At the beginning it was looking like it might be all right and then the BS factor kicked in. I'm not normally that concerned about plot in action movies, but this...
Scott: Plot in action is really an after thought, it's only when the plot actively hurts the movie...
Mike: There were so many illogical and predictable events it was mind-boggling.
Scott: Yes, at one point the main character, Lt. Ben Gannon, played by Josh Lucas, lands in Alaska, only to be attacked by people that helped him land. I'm still not sure why they attacked him. It started to go south with the dogfight scene. That was shot so that you could not even follow it; I stopped trying after 30 seconds or so.
Mike: Visually it was amazing. If you like explosions this is the movie for you.
Scott: The effects were very good, lots of 'splosions, and a few good flight shots too.
Mike: At one point, apparently a missile had napalm in it as it wiped out the entire tree line! The carrier takeoffs were amazing. Very real. But like Firefox and some others, suddenly planes are doing things that planes can't do.
Scott: I thought the planes looked pretty cool.
Mike: Yes, they looked like spaceships, but they weren't supposed to be spaceships. At least I don't think so.
Scott: Another funny thing, they were near Pakistan, but then went to Thailand and then Tajikistan and suddenly they are near North Korea without ever passing near China? They were using wormholes or something.
Mike: I'm not big on geography, but this didn't quite add up.
Scott: Maps.Google.com, the only way to do geography.
Mike: Scott you are upping the geek quotient. Calm down Google boy.
Scott: No, I need to lead my geeky brethren to the altar of the Google.
Mike: Another thing, this movie is called Stealth, but I think I missed the stealth capabilities of these futuristic planes.
Scott: They didn't talk about them, and the way they kept getting shot at makes me wonder if they even had any stealth technology.
Mike: This movie had a good cast that was completely wasted.
Scott: This movie had eye candy for both men and women. There was a waterfall scene that was thrown in just for that.
Mike: That's true. All I'll say is that Jessica Biel, as Kara Wade, is in very good shape.
Scott: As is Josh Lucas.
Mike: Jamie Foxx, as Henry Purcell, added some much needed humor.
Scott: Foxx didn't do enough in the movie to really matter though, he could have been replaced by anyone and no one would have been upset. The previews certainly gave him a bigger role than he actually had.
Mike: I think he was there for a nice paycheck and I don't blame him. Critical acclaim doesn't always pay the bills.
Scott: This was probably complete and in editing before he won his Oscar.
Mike: Sam Shepard and Joe Morton are also wasted playing very generic characters.
Scott: Right, but the whole cast was wasted, the film was wasted, our time was wasted. I didn't know what to expect, but I had low expectations. It didn't look like a good movie from the previews and it wasn't a good movie.
Mike: We didn't predict that XXX: State of the Union was going to bomb, but I think we can do that here.
Scott: Yes, very much so. That movie never took itself seriously, this movie tries and fails to do so. Good effects do not a good movie make.
Mike: True, true.
Scott: What do you rate it?
Mike: This one is going to get a 2 out of 5 overall. I didn't completely hate it, but it was a disappointment. For action, I give it a 3 out of 5. And you?
Scott: I give it a 2 out of 5 for action simply because the effects were good. I give it a 1 out of 5 overall because it was bad. With action you don't expect much, but this was bad. If it's on cable and you are sick or bored, watch it; otherwise don't waste your time.
Mike: If there is absolutely nothing else to see at the theater, then what the heck.
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