Blue Thunder (Special Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Blue Thunder (Special Edition)
Movie Review: My favorite movie of all time
Summary: 5 Stars
Blue Thunder is the fictional story of a high tech helicopter which the government plans to use against the population under the guise of "crowd control from the air" for the upcoming Olympic games. Some of you may remember Airwolf, or even the short lived Blue Thunder series with James Farentino and Dana Carvey, this is where it all started. Although the plot is kinda lame, this movie boasts state of the art (in 1983) aerial combat action sequences over Los Angeles (L.A. natives will recognize the Piper Tech building, where air support is headqurtered, the downtown cityscape, the L.A. river), and a cool chase scene through the LA River, which like the rest of L.A., is concrete and steel. Roy Scheider (Murphy), Daniel Stern(Lymangood), and Warren Oates (in his last picture), give great performances, however, Malcom MacDowell's character, a sinister Army Lt. Colonel, is a bit hard to believe. The real star of the show here is Blue Thunder, a modified 1972 French Gazelle, outfitted with listening devices, video and infrared cams, and an M61 20mm vulcan cannon fitted to the nose. Blue Thunder is able to see through walls, peek down dresses at 1000 feet, and destroy a city block at the touch of a button. Some will notice the similarities to the Apache AH-64, and the cockpit windows are faceted, much like the then-classified stealth fighter.
Blue Thunder takes us to that "big brother is watching you" card reminicent of 1984,(which is the year the Olympics were in L.A.) what with its surveillance equipment, and there is even a reference to that in the movie, when Lymangood asks Murphy, "Big Brother, you want it on or off?" referring to the cockpit recorder which records their conversations. "I think we can lose that,"he replies.
The ending battle scene is great, with an awesome finale, and a somewhat chilling epilogue, as the credits begin to roll. You get the feeling that Murphy has avenged.
All in all, a pretty good movie with a bit of techno-sci-fi-thriller.
Movie Review: slick police thriller
Summary: 4 Stars
This was one of my favorites as a pre teen. If you've ever seen the TV show AIRWOLF, you get what this movie is about. They kind of ripped this movie off with that show. The action scenes are top notch and the story is pretty amusing. All around a pretty solid flick.Movie Review: Fun, but turn off your brain
Summary: 4 Stars
This was one of the first VHS movies I bought. It's fun if you don't think and want to watch cool guys in cool machines trying to kill each other. The plot is thin, but the machines are cool, and for guys, sometimes cool machines are enough. I just happen to be one of those guys.Movie Review: Pleasing Actioner Despite Plot Flaws
Summary: 3 Stars
One hates to get caught agreeing with such insufferably elitist movie critics like Pauline Kael and Leonard Maltin, but their misgivings about the movie Blue Thunder are fairly accurate. Kael goes too far in calling the film "Suspense In A Void," for its implied argument that the film skimps over characters and plot is unfair. The film establishes good audience involvement with the characters, helped by the fine performances of Roy Scheider, Daniel Stern, and Malcolm McDowell.The main draw, of course, is the helicopter, a French-built gunship, reminscent of the AH-64 Apaches featured in Firebirds, but sporting a Gatling cannon with a fire-rate of 4,000 rounds per minute, and high-tech surveillance cameras and microphones. The ship's lethality is demonstrated in a terrific test run by the Army for LAPD brass; the ship blasts away at cardboard dummies representing terrorists and civilians within a mockup of a city block. The film pointedly highlights civilian dummies getting blasted; the audience thus forgets that, given the hopeless interminging of terrorists amid civilians, the gunship's ability to pick out the right targets comes through as well as can be honestly expected. It all closes out with a delightfully explosive strafing run of a bus manned by terrorists.
Frank Murphy (Scheider) is assigned to test Blue Thunder over LA, this over the trepidation of old Army foe Colonel F.E. Cochrane (McDowell). Murphy and his copilot Richard Lymangood (Stern) test the ship's surveillance capability in hilarious fashion when they stare down the cleavage of a waitress and then listen in on a CHP cop (nicknamed Double Dork by Murphy) in bed with another man's wife. But then they get wind of the real reason for the chopper's existence when they follow Cochrane to the city's federal building and record a conversation between Cochrane, other members of the Blue Thunder project, and several government types; they've been instigating rioting in LA's barrios to justify bringing out Blue Thunder in a program called Project THOR. It is a plot that lacks even a minor level of believability or plausibility.
The action scenes and cast are good, but the absurdity of the plot ultimately hurts the film. Nonetheless, the visuals are worth a look.