With assistance from the US Department of Defense, the film also was one of only a few to feature actual A-6 Intruders in carrier flight operations. Despite being a high octane action film with outstanding aerial combat sequences and excellent special effects by ILM, Flight of the Intruder suffered greatly from being released during the height of the real life ground war in Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. The film was directed by John Milius, best known for helming such notable war films such as The Wind and the Lion and Red Dawn, as well as being the screenwriter of Apocalypse Now and Magnum Force. These aviators fly the A-6A Intruder, a carrier-based strike aircraft that carried offensive missiles and bombs but was not outfitted with defensive guns. MPAA-rated: PG-13 (contains bombings and punch-outs).Flight of the Intruder is a 1991 Vietnam War film which was an adaptation of a Stephen Coonts novel and starred Brad Johnson, Danny Glover, and Willem Dafoe as US naval aviators serving aboard the aircraft carrier USS Independence during the height of the conflict. Screenplay by Robert Dillon and David Shaber based on the novel by Stephen Coonts. If only his lines, like the film he figures in, weren’t so aggressively musty.Ī Mace Neufeld and Robert Rehme production, released by Paramount Pictures. And Danny Glover, as the squadron’s commander, gives rich, deep-throated readings to his lines. Dafoe may have worn out his welcome playing ravaged warriors, but he still holds the screen whenever he sports his gargoyle grin. Johnson seems to be playing John Wayne to Milius’ John Ford, and he’s wiped off the screen every time Dafoe shows up.
#FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER MOVIE#
Worse, the movie has Brad Johnson, who was so unforgettably forgettable as the aviator in “Always,” at its center. Besides, the technical standard for such scenes has become almost impossibly high and, by “Top Gun” standards, “Flight of the Intruder” (rated PG-13 for explosions and fisticuffs) is pretty cheesy. The aerial combat sequences aren’t stirring enough to cancel out the cliches. Its banalities don’t do justice to the war or the Americans who served in it. That war, and our feelings about it, are far more complicated than this film allows for. Milius attempts to recapture our feelings for the rousingly patriotic war movies of 50 years ago, but the kind of traditional, true-blue sentiments he’s parading seem out of place in this Vietnam setting. Hollywood, and not Vietnam, is this film’s real point of reference. Milius has an expansive temperament but it’s expansive here in ways that seem emotionally fraudulent. But the Ford war film that this movie draws on, “They Were Expendable,” was considerably darker and more complex than this straight-arrow tub-thumper. Milius, working from a script by Robert Dillon and David Shaber based on the Stephen Coonts bestseller, tries for a John Ford effect. He’s a perfect contrast to Jake’s strong silent dullness. Virgil is one small step away from the I-love-the-smell-of-napalm-in-the-morning breed of soldier, but his manias are presented as screw-loose heroism. Arriving for duty, he pauses for a moment to whiff the aroma of combat. Virgil is on his third tour, and he’s dangerously gung-ho. Virgil Cole (Willem Dafoe), joins the squadron. His fixation takes flight when a new bombardier, Lt. He longs for a real mission and, after his bombardier buddy is killed, he becomes fixated on an unauthorized maneuver-a bombing raid on a missile depot in downtown Hanoi. The strategic targets for which he risks his life are mostly unpopulated forests, abandoned huts.
Jake (Cool Hand) Grafton (Brad Johnson), who pilots an A-6 Intruder, a low-altitude bomber, over enemy airspace in North Vietnam. It certainly won’t find salvation in its mundane script, direction, performances. It’s mediocre, but it comes at a time when audiences may be in the mood to see even a sub-par film about American bomber and fighter pilots braving the odds and strutting their codes of honor.Īs a movie-movie antidote to the harrowing nightly news, “Flight of the Intruder” (selected theaters) may have found its commercial salvation.
Originally set for release last spring, John Milius’ Vietnam saga “Flight of the Intruder” has, by chance, been released into a climate of war.
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