Iron Eagle

Rating:
Summary: A waste of good time
Review: Iron Eagle is a ludicrous film about the 18-year-old son of an air force colonel who, after his father is shot down and taken hostage in an unspecified Middle East country, takes matters into his own hands to save his dad. The country isn't named because in this film there is no difference between countries in the Middle East. They are all the same--highly aggressive and run by the military. From beginning to end, this film relies on Hollywood's most infamous and hackneyed formulas. One of these involves our hero Doug earning his manhood first by racing bullies and later by blowing lots of stuff up. Since this film is about flying, the race in which Doug socks it to his stock tormentors is upgraded from cars to planes. When Doug learns his father has been sentenced to die, he takes charge because he feels the adults are too inept and bureaucratic to see what is right. Doug thinks he knows better than our political leaders what should be done. He gets his friends, also children of air force personnel living on the base, and a crusty retired pilot named "Chappy" Sinclair (Louis Gossett, Jr.) to help him in his plan. Gossett is the only adult in the film who is not portrayed as an uncaring idiot. This is because Gossett is the noble sage who parcels out tidbits of pseudo-knowledge at all the right moments. Gossett does as good a job as possible wading through leaden dialogue like, "There's something about maniacs messing with good men that puts me off," and "The 'touch' is something inside you. . .down there where you keep you guts." Even Gossett cannot save this clunker, despite the fact that he is the best thing about the film, which is not saying much. When Doug puts his plan into action, we see a handful of scenes where Doug and his pals outwit military officers twice their age, in many cases their own parents, to gain access to computers and secret files. According to the plan, Doug will blow things up one by one until his father is released. He will then land, pick up his dad, and head home. And the implausibility gets worse. How is it possible for a single F-16 to lay siege to an entire country? It is possible because this film is going by the rule that states the bad guys will never do so much in their own defense that they will get the jump on the good guys. The bad guys do only enough to keep the action going for a suitable length of time. While Doug is blowing things up, the leader of the Middle East country says things like, "I want these pigs blown out of the sky," "I want these people destroyed," "That pilot is a dead man," and so on, again and again. One would think that a man this determined to win would never allow that plane to take off once he had it trapped on the ground. The film also employs the shopworn tradition that the bad guys always miss and the good guys always get direct hits. The leader of the country is also a pilot, what a surprise, so Doug has to face him in the air. However, there are more surprises in store. In a completely implausible attempt at a plot twist, a character even returns from the dead. And as we might expect, Doug receives no punishment because it could jeopardize national security. He even parlays his illegal actions into an appointment to the air force academy. This is an inane movie with a hero we cannot get involved with. When Doug is not expressing his righteous indignation over the air force's complacency in regard to his father's situation, he is a very dull character. This is a waste of time and film.

Rating:
Summary: Inferior but unforgettable air war flick
Review: Jason Gedrick is Doug Masters, teen-pilot ace, son of a USAF fighter pilot, AF academy hopeful and high-school failure. Doug is normally not that responsible a kid (mostly when tooling around in low-level air races in the family Cessna), but is forced to mature when his father is shot down and taken prisoner over an unnamed mideastern country. A naturally gifted pilot, Doug has managed to cajole his father into taking him on some practice flights in the past, as well as worming his way into the base's F-16 simulator. Now with the help of "Chappy" Sinclair (Louis Gosset Jr.), a crusty but not rusty reserve fighter pilot, and some of Doug's friends - a click of army-brat and aviation enthusiast-teens who populate the unnamed desert air force base where Doug's father stages - the younger Masters plans an impossible rescue. Together with Chappie, Doug seizes a pair of twin-seat F-16's, loads them up to maximum payload, and flies into hostile territory.

This movie came out in late 1985 and would have been toast had it appeared about six months later when "Top Gun" was released. The premise is improbable, the flight scenes suffer in comparison to those in "Top Gun" (instead of the carefully choreographed dogfights and editing, IE has plenty of footage of the F-16's digital instruments - the flight scenes themselves look like stock footage and repetitive at that), special effects aren't great (enemy jets explode like toy models; the MiG blasted on the ground is not only an obvious dummy, but shot at the angle to make that most obvious; the sound is horrible) and the realism is also pretty low apart from the premise - fully loaded F-16's aren't in any condition to dogfight (at least until the advent of the AIM-120 missile well after this movie came out), while flack guns seem almost entirely non-existent and enemy jets simply explode with the push of a button.

Still, this was a fun movie and seemed to capture that sense of harmless (for our side anyway) jingoism of Reagan's 2nd term. The plot goes a surprisingly long way into dealing with the inherent implausibility (Doug is good, but he's rough and his limits are well mapped out). Also, much of the reason that IE falls behind TG has to do with the fact that F-16 isn't as photogenic as the F-14 (not that it's ugly - simply that it's smaller and hard to spot. You simply see a speck that becomes an F-16 and disappears again in a flash, a deficiency on film that most F-16 pilots would doubtless prefer to live with). The Israeli Kfir jets are quite convincing stand-ins for the MiG-23 (at the time, the US Marines flew leased Kfirs in dissimilar air-combat training), and only the most annoying military aviation enthusiasts will harp on how the USAF F-16's in the movie are painted according to Israeli colors (and how single-seat F-16A's mysteriously morph into twin-seat F-16B's and vica-versa). Most of all, this was the first jet movie I'd really seen, and it was impressive enough for me to plunk down ($) for my first computer flight-sim program. On a side-note, the soundtrack comes with "One Vision" by Queen, but the rest of the songs aren't up to that. To get the song, I'd recommend Queen's own "A Kind of Magic" which also has some great tracks from the first Highlander movie.

Rating:
Summary: one star too generous
Review: Just read the review posted by "[e-mail]" below. He hits it perfectly.

There are some films that try to be something MORE than they are. B-Movies are awful, everyone knows it. Movies like Iron Eagle, Red Dawn, Batman & Robin, and Alien: Resurrection are trying to be something they are not; attempting to be better than they actually are by throwing more money at it, casting bigger stars, rewriting the already confusing script to cover the plot holes, or just painting the screen with violence and explosions so they can get the male crowd to buy the ticket. This film is rife with so many alarming problems that make you wonder how funding for it got off the ground. But, it was mid-eighties and the Cold War, so we needed flicks that flexed the American military might and insulted Middle Eastern countries. This film is an embarassment to the US Air Force (yes, I am a member) and is characteristic of America's skewed prejudice of Middle Eastern countries. The generalized depiction of these people is abhorrent and frankly very embarassing to watch. No wonder America seems to not understand that region of the world. We take movies more at face value than we should. If you want to kick back and just watch it and veg, fine. Just don't think it's a realistic and deep film. It isn't.

Easily the top film on my list as the worst ever. Funny thing is, if it's on, I watch it so I can amuse myself by ripping it apart. I guess you could watch it for the flying sequences. But, if you're going to do that, why don't you just buy a video on military aircraft then.

Leonard Maltin said it, "not boring, just stupid." No kidding. The DVD would make a good frisbee...

Rating:
Summary: A decent Action flick from the 80's
Review: Long of the short of this movie is that the star's father is shot down by some badguys over a unnamed country in the Mid-East. The is a young man that is in the process of graduating from high school and finds out that his father is going to be killed by the bad guys and decides to mount a rescue mission. After getting help from Louis Gosset Jr. The star steals a pair of F-16's with help from his High School buddies and goes over there to rescue his father after the US government decides to sit on it hands.

This is typical 80's action flick that came out the same time as "Top Gun", they were about 6 months apart. It is a decent way to waste a lazy weekend afternoon when there is nothing else on TV or for a road trip. Although it can get to be a bit hollywood patrotic at times, it is still good fun to watch. Listening to all the good music too during the flying scenes are good as well.

Rating:
Summary: The Soundtrack
Review: Maybe Iron Eagle is not one of the best movies but it is still a lot of fun. I especially liked the soundtrack which i own on CD. But 3 of the best songs were not included. These were "Were not gonna take it" from Twisted Sister, "Eyes of the World" from Eric Martin and "old enough to rock & roll" from Rainey Haynes. The first 2 were available on CD but the last one is a bit of a problem. My question: Is the song "Old enogh to rock & roll" from Rainey Haynes available on CD? I have searched the internet without succes. Is there anyone outthere who can help me? Please mail me!

Greetings from Bart ([e-mail])

Rating:
Summary: Just Plane Fun
Review: OK. It's NOT a documentary on the military (thank goodness). It's eye candy. It's ear candy. It's just a fun movie. It's one you'll want to add to your collection.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic
Review: One of my favorite movies as a kid. My friends and I burned through two copies of this movie when we were in 6th grade. I still remember putting on our fathers fire gear pretending we were in the cockpit with Doug Masters!!!!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: one of the 80's best!
Review: one of the best movies of the 80's.A sure fire crowd pleaser!

Rating:
Summary: The Music ROCKS!
Review: The 80's beats in this "THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER" make we want to pump IRON EAGLE all day!!!

Rating:
Summary: Best film in the series
Review: The first time I saw this I must have been about 12 or 13 and I thought it was BETTER than Top Gun in some aspects. The plot was extremely far fetched an 18 year old rescues his father from some un-named "Middle Eastern" country with the help of a retired Air Force Col. and his friends Btw how the hell can one kid have the whole base wired for his own personel needs? The acting wasn't that bad Lou Gossett, Jr was ace as retired AF Col. Charles "Chappy" Sinclair Jason Gedrick was very good as Doug "I got the whole god dam base wired" Masters (Too bad Doug got blown out of the sky in IE II) and the Minister of Defense played by David Suchet aka Poirot was great as the "bad guy" of the un-named Middle Eastern country. I liked this the most out of ALL the movies that were made. I got it dirt cheap so I am going to complain about the lack of any extras it was a good movie in its time and I enjoyed it for what it was even if it was fantasy. Just stay FAR AWAY as possible from the sequels esp II & IV III I don't remember too much about as I haven"t seen it in YEARS. The original Iron Eagle gets 4 and a half stars from me despite its extremely far fetched plot. The score for this film was excellent I liked it and the music was great too