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See the rest of the reviews here.

Stealth

Cast: Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, Jamie Foxx, Sam Shepard, Richard Roxburgh, Joe Morton. Directed by Rob Cohen. Story: A pilotless fighter plane goes bananas. Running Time: 2hrs 1 minute. Certificate 12A.

The trailer would have us believe that Stealth is a faintly ludicrous, barely believable action flick with very little going for it except some cool special effects. And it's right. Except that for "faintly ludicrous", read "laughably absurd" and for "barely believable", read "less convincing than an estate agent's CV".

Stealth is, as you will have already realised, pretty awful. When you learn that it's made by Rob Cohen, who directed xXx, and that it's trying to be a modern day Top Gun, you've got it banged to rights. From the slo-mo walk across the aircraft carrier to the impossible airborne manouevres, via the contrived and cheesey dialogue, it's Top Gun's monkey-see-monkey-do younger brother. If you're too young to remember the original pap that made Tom Cruise famous, then you might just be in the target audience. For anyone older, you really need to be a hardened action fan to be able to ignore the inanity and offensive implausibility of the screenplay. The story of a fighter plane with artificial intelligence and the capability to learn is not a new one, and could easily have been made at least partly believable, but no, we don't get a decent story or even much in the way of gratuitious titillation that you could normally expect in a teen-aimed dross-pic. The BBC movies site, which I already suspected of not watching many of the movies that they review, is becoming increasingly inaccurate - don't believe their lies that Jessica Biel "spends as much time in the buff as in the air". There's a 30-second scene of her in a bikini - that's it.

The performances don't really matter in an empty cackfest such as this, but they're adequate throughout. I actually thought I was watching Matthew McConaughey (from Sahara) the whole way through until I saw Josh Lucas on the end credits, that's how insignificant the people are. Stealth is an effect-driven movie, and they are in fact excellent. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there weren't any real planes used in the whole movie - everything airborne and half the ground pieces look computer-generated. Using the familiar style-over-substance protocol, we see the planes barrel-rolling and hotdogging across the landscape, causing some spectacular explosions - one in particular propels a band of infantry into the air and is all the more effective for it. Even the more mundane effects are good, such as a remarkable scene transition from seascape into concrete floor with no discernible join.

Stealth is a carbon copy of Top Gun with updated effects, and is thus the Baywatch of action movies, but with CGI replacing the totty. Take it for what it is and you might enjoy the epidermal thrills, expect any kind of quality movie and you'll be as disappointed as the bimbo bank robber that found out too late what they meant when they said she'd be "punished by the penal system".

I enjoyed this film: 2/5

I think the average moviegoer will enjoy it: 3/5

Testosterone Satisfaction Rating: 4/5 Jessica Biel in a skimpy bikini and lots of super-cool crash-bang and whooo-wheeeeee effects.

To enjoy this film you should be: an action fan all the way. It'll help if you're shitfaced too.

Your comments

The comments printed here are not necessarily the views of Forwardcharm!

WARNING *** SPOILERS ***

I had hoped this movie would be a 21st century Top Gun, just for the flying sequences, however, it turns out to be a cross between bad acting and CGI effects with no grounding in fact.

Stealth has action but no story. I could write a better plot! The story in the film is basically 3 jocks (one of them a girl) get picked from 4000 hopefuls to fly the new super Stealth aircraft which seems to be a cross between Thunderbird 1 and Firefox with the voice of Bond's BMW5
series computer.

There is the usual I love you bit between Lucas and Biel (call signs One and Two), I'm no pilot but I expect call signs should be sexier (can you imagine Burt Reynolds being called 'Driver' in Bandit). On with the film.. 3 pilots get 3 Stealth fighters to kill bad guys, wait for it, now there's a fourth but this one is all computer and called E.D.I which is a learning computer and the three humans are supposed to fly with it on missions so it can pick up their skills.

To give you a feel of the rubbish in this movie I'm going to spoil a scene, one particular mission is to blow up an office building in the middle of Rangoon. How do they know this, cause their stealth fighters and satellites in the sky can perform retinal scans and finger print analyses of the terrorists and confirm their identities, question: How did they have their finger prints and retinal data already on file? Anyway, their mission is to shoot missiles at the terrorists and blow up the building but it must be blown up with no innocent casualties which is impossible as it's in the middle of Rangoon, however E.D.I works out that it can be done if a missile is fired whilst the plane is in a full
throttle descent heading straight down. It's an impossible mission, so E.D.I is ordered to do it because a human would black out, not our intrepid leader he does it and lives. Yawn.....

Getting on with the story, they all fly back to the Aircraft carrier and E.D.I gets its brain fried by a lighting bolt (The plane must have cost Billions to produce but no one thought to shield anything from an electrical hit, strange!!). Why does it not use its VTOL capability to land? OK, plane gets fried, sort of gets repaired but Kwik Fit fitter don't investigate just changes a part and now we have a rogue aircraft, E.D.I kills number Three (Foxx) Two's plane gets caught in wreckage and she ejects and One gets to show us his flying skills and their's a good CGI ring of fire! Middle stage of the film is not worth talking about and the ending is right out of standard sci-fi in so far as A.I gets emotion and understanding (even empathy) and pays the ultimate sacrifice (why it did not use Missiles is beyond me!!)

To close, if you want to see a bit of Biel in a bikini go see the movie if you want to see good flight sequences rent Top Gun.
Mike G