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Stealth in name only
04 December 2005
[indent]In modern terms, the Frankenstein legend has been revisited to become a plot complication: humans invent superior technology to solve a problem which then turns on them and they have to battle their creation. Redemption comes not in the solving of the original problem, but in victory over their own folly.
It's quite not the moral Mary Shelley intended in her book, but it works, especially for plot-challenged Hollywood.
Stealth is a 30-minute movie stretched to 121 that uses the old, tried-n-true Frankenstein theme at its heart. The monster (remember, kiddies, Frankenstein is the creator, not the monster!) is a talking high-tech airplane operated by a futuristic artificial intelligence.
Remember Hal of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame? It's Hal with a better costume. Only this time it's called EDI - Extreme Deep Invader - "Eddie" by nickname. Shades of Mr. Ed, the talking horse... but it's hard to tell whose dialogue is more mechanical: Eddie's or the rest of the cast.
The story is about the three best pilots in the US flying three prototype super-fighters. They are joined by an experimental AI-piloted ship. A lightning strike scrambles the AI's brains and it goes rogue. The humans have to try and stop it before it starts WWIII.
The cast is basically thrown in to provide what little acting there remains to glue the special effects together. After all, how much acting can you do inside the cockpit of a jet travelling at Mach 5? Lots of flight scenes, sure, lots of swooshing, diving, barrel rolls and Immelman turns... but the humans are little more than talking heads here. They do a little acting on leave in Thailand, but not enough to flesh them into believable characters, just enough to expose their weaknesses to the audience.
There's a little romantic interplay suggested between the female and lead male pilot, something the directors should have played up more if nothing else than to give the audiences something with skin, not just the metal hides of the airplanes. They're both fair eye candy, so a little contact sport under the sheets might have alleviated the sameness of the flight scenes.
The three fly from a carrier in the Indian Ocean, zip over the Himalayas into Tajikistan (a magical flight that apparently only takes a few minutes) to bomb some nasty Islamic terrorists (what stereotypes? aren't all terrorists Muslim warlords living in feudal castles in backward mountainous nations?). The humans decide they can't kill the innocent farmers down there, the ones helping haul warheads into the warlord's castle, but Eddie, the machine without a conscience, does it for them, unleashing a cloud of radioactive dust that threatens thousands more.
Eddie decides to keep on the killing spree, humans in pursuit. Come back, Eddie! Bad, Eddie! No more hot oil rub downs for you!
Big chase scene, pilots hunting Eddie. Black guy dies. White folk continue the chase. Girl pilot's plane suffers mechanical problems, she ends up bailing out over North Korea. Huh? Wait a second. A few minutes ago she was a few thousand miles southwest of North Korea. The carrier is a loooong way off in the other direction. The three best pilots have a lousy sense of direction. And a remarkably large fuel capacity for a small plane.
Human saves Eddie from evil Russian fighters (pilots doing their duty by fending off invaders into their airspace). Although the Americans on the carrier transmitted Eddie's target coordinates to the Russians, no one seems to have thought to enlist their help to stop the runaway machine. Instead, the human and Eddie pair up to shoot down the Russians. Eddie must be programmed to show gratitude, because it now decides to play nice again.
Eddie allows itself to be led to a secret base in Alaska (now we're about 10,000 miles from the bombing site...). Fight scene in hangar (suggestions of evil CIA trying to hush up the events). Eddie lets pilot inside its cockpit and both go out in search of the missing girl. Somehow she's managed to escape the entire North Korean army on her heels and made it to the border. It's a few hundred miles long, that border, but Eddie manages to set down a few feet from where she's trapped. Nice sense of direction, Eddie. Remarkable that you never even had to refuel to fly all that way back (in about 2 minutes, too!).
Guy and girl are reunited, Eddie redeems itself by flying into a North Korean chopper and saving the humans to escape into South Korea. At least there was no "It's a far, far better thing I do..." monologue before its demise. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether it's Frankenstein or Pinnochio being played out.
Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. Two gruelling hours that felt like five, and should have been one. Or less.
Curiously, no one seems concerned that in the process of flying all over Asia, the pilots violate sovereign airspace of several nations, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, China, Russia, North Korea, South Korea and probably Japan and Mongolia. Plus Eddie unleashed a cloud of lethal radioactive dust that's drifting over hill and dale into Pakistan.
You'd think there might be some teensy little international fallout over all this, but we never find out if anyone even wrote a stern note of displeasure to the American consul about it. I'll bet Walmart would be upset if those jets flew into Chinese airspace and jeopardized its trade in cheap knock-offs.
Overall: 1 out of 5. It would have been a lowly .5, but it is redeemed somewhat by some basic decency in the production: no one smokes (except the bad guy, and he doesn't even light up), no one drives big honking terrorist-funding SUVs, and no one swears just to try and sound like they have street cred. A little skin might have boosted it to a 1.5, but not enough to save it or permit a second viewing.[/indent]
It's quite not the moral Mary Shelley intended in her book, but it works, especially for plot-challenged Hollywood.
Stealth is a 30-minute movie stretched to 121 that uses the old, tried-n-true Frankenstein theme at its heart. The monster (remember, kiddies, Frankenstein is the creator, not the monster!) is a talking high-tech airplane operated by a futuristic artificial intelligence.
Remember Hal of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame? It's Hal with a better costume. Only this time it's called EDI - Extreme Deep Invader - "Eddie" by nickname. Shades of Mr. Ed, the talking horse... but it's hard to tell whose dialogue is more mechanical: Eddie's or the rest of the cast.
The story is about the three best pilots in the US flying three prototype super-fighters. They are joined by an experimental AI-piloted ship. A lightning strike scrambles the AI's brains and it goes rogue. The humans have to try and stop it before it starts WWIII.
The cast is basically thrown in to provide what little acting there remains to glue the special effects together. After all, how much acting can you do inside the cockpit of a jet travelling at Mach 5? Lots of flight scenes, sure, lots of swooshing, diving, barrel rolls and Immelman turns... but the humans are little more than talking heads here. They do a little acting on leave in Thailand, but not enough to flesh them into believable characters, just enough to expose their weaknesses to the audience.
There's a little romantic interplay suggested between the female and lead male pilot, something the directors should have played up more if nothing else than to give the audiences something with skin, not just the metal hides of the airplanes. They're both fair eye candy, so a little contact sport under the sheets might have alleviated the sameness of the flight scenes.
The three fly from a carrier in the Indian Ocean, zip over the Himalayas into Tajikistan (a magical flight that apparently only takes a few minutes) to bomb some nasty Islamic terrorists (what stereotypes? aren't all terrorists Muslim warlords living in feudal castles in backward mountainous nations?). The humans decide they can't kill the innocent farmers down there, the ones helping haul warheads into the warlord's castle, but Eddie, the machine without a conscience, does it for them, unleashing a cloud of radioactive dust that threatens thousands more.
Eddie decides to keep on the killing spree, humans in pursuit. Come back, Eddie! Bad, Eddie! No more hot oil rub downs for you!
Big chase scene, pilots hunting Eddie. Black guy dies. White folk continue the chase. Girl pilot's plane suffers mechanical problems, she ends up bailing out over North Korea. Huh? Wait a second. A few minutes ago she was a few thousand miles southwest of North Korea. The carrier is a loooong way off in the other direction. The three best pilots have a lousy sense of direction. And a remarkably large fuel capacity for a small plane.
Human saves Eddie from evil Russian fighters (pilots doing their duty by fending off invaders into their airspace). Although the Americans on the carrier transmitted Eddie's target coordinates to the Russians, no one seems to have thought to enlist their help to stop the runaway machine. Instead, the human and Eddie pair up to shoot down the Russians. Eddie must be programmed to show gratitude, because it now decides to play nice again.
Eddie allows itself to be led to a secret base in Alaska (now we're about 10,000 miles from the bombing site...). Fight scene in hangar (suggestions of evil CIA trying to hush up the events). Eddie lets pilot inside its cockpit and both go out in search of the missing girl. Somehow she's managed to escape the entire North Korean army on her heels and made it to the border. It's a few hundred miles long, that border, but Eddie manages to set down a few feet from where she's trapped. Nice sense of direction, Eddie. Remarkable that you never even had to refuel to fly all that way back (in about 2 minutes, too!).
Guy and girl are reunited, Eddie redeems itself by flying into a North Korean chopper and saving the humans to escape into South Korea. At least there was no "It's a far, far better thing I do..." monologue before its demise. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether it's Frankenstein or Pinnochio being played out.
Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. Two gruelling hours that felt like five, and should have been one. Or less.
Curiously, no one seems concerned that in the process of flying all over Asia, the pilots violate sovereign airspace of several nations, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, China, Russia, North Korea, South Korea and probably Japan and Mongolia. Plus Eddie unleashed a cloud of lethal radioactive dust that's drifting over hill and dale into Pakistan.
You'd think there might be some teensy little international fallout over all this, but we never find out if anyone even wrote a stern note of displeasure to the American consul about it. I'll bet Walmart would be upset if those jets flew into Chinese airspace and jeopardized its trade in cheap knock-offs.
Overall: 1 out of 5. It would have been a lowly .5, but it is redeemed somewhat by some basic decency in the production: no one smokes (except the bad guy, and he doesn't even light up), no one drives big honking terrorist-funding SUVs, and no one swears just to try and sound like they have street cred. A little skin might have boosted it to a 1.5, but not enough to save it or permit a second viewing.[/indent]
