Blue Thunder (Special Edition)
by John Badham
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Candy Clark, Daniel Stern, Paul Roebling, Roy Scheider, Warren OatesDirector: John Badham
Brand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; Portuguese (Dubbed), Unknown
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 109 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-04-04
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures
Movie Reviews of Blue Thunder (Special Edition)
Movie Review: Still scary after all these years
Summary: 3 Stars
Blue Thunder
I first saw this movie over a decade ago (maybe two). Yes, it's a bit outdated by our standards and the music is really cheesy, but the story itself is still dramatic.
It starts with a night shift air patrol by policeman Frank Murphy and his new partner, Lymangood. They see a suspicious abandoned car and call it in. A few minutes later, that car disappears just as a female city commissioner is assaulted and shot on the same private dead-end street. She ends up in dying and the police blame it on an attempted rape, although it was something completely different. And she's the Chairman of the Committee on Urban Violence so she's not just any city commissioner.
You sense a cover-up from the beginning, but the real intrigue begins when Murphy is set up to test a new military surveillance helicopter called Blue Thunder. Then things get really scary. This was filmed back before the government used satellites to watch everyone, so the idea that the government could see right into your home was really creepy. Of course, that's changed with time and you would think the movie would be less frightening, but it's not. Supposedly, the Blue Thunder is the latest thing in crowd control since the Olympics are scheduled to be held in Los Angeles. At least, that's the official excuse for creating such a weapon-clad stealth vehicle for urban use.
I won't spoil the story, but one of the good guys does die, and the commissioner's death is related. Malcolm McDowell plays the bad guy, an army colonel determined to see his pet project used in every city (and funded by tax payers). Roy Scheider plays Murphy and since his own personal life is so screwed up, he makes an interesting character, plus he has a background relationship with the Colonel (Murphy tried to get the Colonel court-martialed during the Vietnam War). Warren Oates plays Murphy's police captain and has some funny lines. There are a few moments that are really chilling, like when the army personnel are testing the Blue Thunder and keep shooting the civilian targets "by accident" and when Lymangood is run down by the bad guys. This is one of those movies that's still scary years after its original release.
I had to dock one star just because the music drove me batty and the production is more movie-of-the-week than theatre-quality. Worth renting, not necessarily worth buying. Certainly entertaining to watch the helicopter scenes and see how they're used by the police. I had to dock another star for some very inplausible, and disturbing, scenes. Like the Colonel tampering with a police helicopter, causing it to crash into the Watts area of LA. Or Murphy's girlfriend (a policeman's girlfriend) doing a u-turn at forty miles per hour on a one-way road with an unbuckled child in the front seat. Things like that may have made it past the editing stage back then, but just make it unbelievable these days.
Summary of Blue Thunder (Special Edition)
Roy Scheider stars in this intense action thriller as a courageous police officer pilot battling government fanatics planning to misuse an experimental attack helicopter. Chosen to test BLUE THUNDER Frank Murphy (Scheider) is amazed by the high-speed high-tech chopper. It can see through walls record a whisper or level a city block. Distrusting the military mentality behind BLUE THUNDER Murphy and his partner Lymangood (Daniel Stern) soon discover that the remarkable craft is slated for use as the ultimate weapon in surveillance and crowd control. Jeopardized after being discovered by sinister Colonel Cochrane (Malcolm McDowell) Murphy flies BLUE THUNDER against military aircraft in a spellbinding contest over Los Angeles.System Requirements:Run Time: 109 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre:?ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating:?R UPC:?043396108882 Manufacturer No:?10888"Suspense in a void" is how critic Pauline Kael described this action-packed hit from 1983. In other words, this is one of those flashy, superbly crafted high-tech thrillers in which the star is a machine, while intelligent plotting and human characters are a lesser priority. The machine in question is Blue Thunder--a heavily armored prototype helicopter that is secretly being tested for use in a devious government conspiracy. Roy Scheider plays the police pilot who catches on to the nefarious plot and takes to the skies against an evil army colonel (Malcolm McDowell) who will defend his coconspirators at any cost. Director John Badham was a hot property in the early '80s (he directed WarGames the same year), and Blue Thunder served as the popular model for many formulaic action thrillers to follow. That doesn't make it a great movie, but with a fine cast (including Daniel Stern in a memorable supporting role) and a dazzling aerial chase among big-city skyscrapers, Blue Thunder qualifies as slick entertainment. --Jeff Shannon
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