What movie are you viewing at the moment?

[Sandi Anderson]

The Train 1964 7.9/10
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059825/

[diamelsx]

Paid In Full (2002)

[Hertz]

...I needed a little bit of adrenaline from the 80s

The Prowler (1981)
www.imdb.com/title/tt0082951/



My Bloody Valentine (1981)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082782/

[tomesing]

The Breed



Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if9ig3wblSA


tomesing

[MaxJoker]

This ,



Has only just started and really hit the ground running. Gist of the story concerns a hit (?) woman (The sublimely sexy and athletic Gina Carano) determined to avenge something or other.



Hey I've deliberately avoided the synopsis ok

[Brecht]

Firefox (1982)



Trailer

A British-American plot is developed to steal a MiG-31, a highly advanced stealth fighter jet capable of Mach 6 speed. But that's not all: this beast's weapon systems can be controlled with thoughts... but only if they're in Russian! That's why they send Mitchell Gant (Clint Eastwood), a Vietnam veteran with a Russian mother...

Boy this is one piece of shit! I used to think Pink Cadillac was Eastwood's worst film but this takes the cake. What was he thinking here? The dialogues sound like they were written by a chimp. Oh and don't forget the Vietnam flashbacks. Whenever he's in a very critical situation, he finds all the time in the world for his flashbacks. What made me laugh most though were the "Moscow scenes". Everyone who's been there at least once in his life will notice that the Moscow scenes were shot in Vienna. Whatever, Firefox is a film that should be avoided. I was very disappointed.

[trailmaster]

Originally Posted by Brecht

Firefox (1982)



Trailer

A British-American plot is developed to steal a MiG-31, a highly advanced stealth fighter jet capable of Mach 6 speed. But that's not all: this beast's weapon systems can be controlled with thoughts... but only if they're in Russian! That's why they send Mitchell Gant (Clint Eastwood), a Vietnam veteran with a Russian mother...

Boy this is one piece of shit! I used to think Pink Cadillac was Eastwood's worst film but this takes the cake. What was he thinking here? The dialogues sound like they were written by a chimp. Oh and don't forget the Vietnam flashbacks. Whenever he's in a very critical situation, he finds all the time in the world for his flashbacks. What made me laugh most though were the "Moscow scenes". Everyone who's been there at least once in his life will notice that the Moscow scenes were shot in Vienna. Whatever, Firefox is a film that should be avoided. I was very disappointed.

I agree with you on everything, but I still have this movie on disc because I like the last 30 minutes of the film when Eastwood finally steals this mighty aircraft and tests its capabilities. The visual effects used were quite good.

[CARLTON BROWN]

Originally Posted by Brecht

Firefox (1982)



Trailer

A British-American plot is developed to steal a MiG-31, a highly advanced stealth fighter jet capable of Mach 6 speed. But that's not all: this beast's weapon systems can be controlled with thoughts... but only if they're in Russian! That's why they send Mitchell Gant (Clint Eastwood), a Vietnam veteran with a Russian mother...

Boy this is one piece of shit! I used to think Pink Cadillac was Eastwood's worst film but this takes the cake. What was he thinking here? The dialogues sound like they were written by a chimp. Oh and don't forget the Vietnam flashbacks. Whenever he's in a very critical situation, he finds all the time in the world for his flashbacks. What made me laugh most though were the "Moscow scenes". Everyone who's been there at least once in his life will notice that the Moscow scenes were shot in Vienna. Whatever, Firefox is a film that should be avoided. I was very disappointed.

I agree to a large extent. I read the book prior to the movie and it was actually quite good. Not up to the technical standard of Joe Poyer's North Cape, but a fairly good Alistair McLean type read.

Filming went wrong in a number of ways and the idea of actually making it in Russia was always going to be a non-starter. Still, the locations looked fairly convincing to most people in the West. I thought Vienna wasn't all that bad to be honest, for the time.

The Cold War was still well underway and those pesky Ruskies were as bad as the Nazis. The mock-up aircraft was quite good, being drawn from US and theoretical Russian ideas although stealth and Mach 6 were a step too far. The real MiG-31 actually called Foxhound is still in Russian service and a very high performance fighter due for replacement. It's not like the one in the film, which does some impossible stuff. There are plenty of technical errors, but never mind. The acting was pretty poor and very unconvincing and the flashbacks stupid.

I didn't like the aerial stuff which looked amateurish when the film was released, but it wasn't all that bad for the time period, when advanced computer graphics were still a decade away. When you see simulated flight and spacecraft on todays movies like the Avengers/Gravity or something similar, the effects are just about flawless. However, Firefox was only a step on from stuff like the TV series Blake 7, which was visually awful when the models were used, even if everyone was generally swept along by the overall entertainment factor. Sadly, Firefox never quite hit the spot!

[diamelsx]

Originally Posted by trailmaster

I agree with you on everything, but I still have this movie on disc because I like the last 30 minutes of the film when Eastwood finally steals this mighty aircraft and tests its capabilities. The visual effects used were quite good.

I will agree with your review aND say the movie was a product of its time 1982 as anything else...

[Brecht]

Originally Posted by CARLTON BROWN

I agree to a large extent. I read the book prior to the movie and it was actually quite good. Not up to the technical standard of Joe Poyer's North Cape, but a fairly good Alistair McLean type read.

Filming went wrong in a number of ways and the idea of actually making it in Russia was always going to be a non-starter. Still, the locations looked fairly convincing to most people in the West. I thought Vienna wasn't all that bad to be honest, for the time.

The Cold War was still well underway and those pesky Ruskies were as bad as the Nazis. The mock-up aircraft was quite good, being drawn from US and theoretical Russian ideas although stealth and Mach 6 were a step too far. The real MiG-31 actually called Foxhound is still in Russian service and a very high performance fighter due for replacement. It's not like the one in the film, which does some impossible stuff. There are plenty of technical errors, but never mind. The acting was pretty poor and very unconvincing and the flashbacks stupid.

I didn't like the aerial stuff which looked amateurish when the film was released, but it wasn't all that bad for the time period, when advanced computer graphics were still a decade away. When you see simulated flight and spacecraft on todays movies like the Avengers/Gravity or something similar, the effects are just about flawless. However, Firefox was only a step on from stuff like the TV series Blake 7, which was visually awful when the models were used, even if everyone was generally swept along by the overall entertainment factor. Sadly, Firefox never quite hit the spot!

I'm not familiar with the book but I'm sure it's much better than this screen adaptation. Like trailmaster said, the visual effects were pretty good for the early 80s. The MiG-31 design looked great, too. It was based on the XB-70 Valkyrie while it was meant to look like an upgraded MiG-25 in the novel. The author Craig Thomas was right as the actual MiG-31 (Foxhound) was built to replace the MiG-25 (Foxbat). In 1976, the Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko defected to the West with a MiG-25. He told the Americans that the Soviets were working on a new powerful jet that was supposed to replace the Foxbat and I think this event served as a major inspiration for the Firefox story.

The Moscow scenes were not convincing in my opinion, not even at that time. The Moscow Metro looks nothing like the U-Bahn in Vienna and there are quite a few metro scenes in the film. They've just used some Russian shields to cover the Viennese station names. I recognized a logo of an Austriank bank, the Sparkasse, in a scene. Of course, the average viewer in the US or Britain wouldn't know. Obviously filming on locations in Russia or Eastern Europe was out of the question but it could have been better.

Most of the acting is awful, especially the perfomances by Freddie Jones and David Huffman who plays Captain Buckholz. But it's not fair to blame the actors as the entire film looks like a complete failure.