Flight of the Intruder (1991)

Great Film overall

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Who is this movie for? If your favorite war films are along the lines of "Platoon", "Fury", "Hamburger Hill", "The Beast of War", and "Battle of Britain" this movie combines some of the best elements from all of these to produce a well-made movie about Navy carrier A-6 pilots in the final years of American involvement in the Vietnam war. Set in 1972, shortly after President Nixon ordered "Operation Linebacker" against North Vietnam (an American bombing campaign intended to convince the communist leaders to return to the peace table), "Intruder" shows the lives of Navy pilots who fly the, by then usually pointless, bombing raids against North Vietnam. We meet the real star of the movie from the very beginning: the aircraft they fly is the Grumman A-6 intruder bomber - a slow speed but very advanced aircraft crammed full of the latest American electronic technology, getting a real workout in the deadly skies over North Vietnam. I won't reveal too many plot details here since the real show is watching the pilots do their stuff - apparently bombing North Vietnam was the most heavily defended area in the world and bristled with guns of every caliber and hundreds of SAM sites - and was extremely dangerous for American pilots. But by this time in the war, .the US had developed an anti-radar missile, the AGM-45 Shrike; that fired a 150 lb warhead with the ability to home in on the radar beam from a Vietnamese Sam site and destroy it. Watching the Intruder pilots narrowly avoiding anti-aircraft and SAM missiles is exciting stuff and to me the best parts of the movie. A great military movie that's in the same general category as "Top Gun" but with a much tighter story and better action sequences. If you're a military/war movie buff, don't miss this film.

A smart story about the true character of America and the free world -- not of government, mind you. Simply put, don't count on Uncle Sam; only yourself and each other. Forget the mirage of left- versus right-wing politics. Forget religion and other hypocrisies. Like most stories about Vietnam, this film examines the inherent madness of mass society. The U.S. Military had no chance in South Vietnam. The North was committed to a systematic extermination of the pesky U.S. presence. Like the disappearance of Indian tribes and wolves from the native American landscape by government sanction, the U.S. military in South Vietnam was powerless against the madness perpetuated against them. The film is really about the pursuit of love, life, and liberty as opposed to suppressing or killing the wild inside of us. But most people are just afraid of the wild and so they kill it.

During the air war over Vietnam, a US Navy A-6 Intruder tactical bomber pilot schemes with a hardened veteran to make an unauthorized air strike on Hanoi.Director John Milius later recalled, "That was Paramount with the Paramount control, and they tried to control every aspect of it. I'd spent more money than I'd ever spent before, because they told me how much I was going to spend on it. They didn't let me control it. I would have made that movie for at least $5 million less." One can only imagine what Milius would have done with complete control! Roger Ebert called the film a "mess", noting that "some scenes say one thing, some say another." Others have complained about the special effects. I thought it was alright. Not a great film, but in retrospect somewhat interesting due to the cast. I mean, wow, a pre-"Friends" David Schwimmer and a pre-"Pulp Fiction" Ving Rhames?

Two pilots aboard an US aircraft carrier during the Vietnam war take the war into their own hands when they commandeer an A6 bomber, known as the "Intruder" and head over protective airspace to bomb Hanoi. Something promising couldn't eventuated, but I found "Flight of the Intruder" to be rather mundane despite being well-made and capturing the atmosphere aboard the carrier. Story arches are there, but they feel quite moody, superficial (like the rushed romance angle with Rosanne Arquette's character) and cliché. Its slow-build up is planned in a calculative manner, but when it came to the action scenes, it just didn't ignite much in the way of thrills despite some stellar visuals and aerial photography. Although it's more than just a basic action joint, as comradeship between the pilots is probably its strong point along with its anti-war sentiment putting this war into perspective with some strong script writing. Especially when Johnson's rogue character becomes frustrated by questioning his orders and the stirring speech about knowing the difference of dieing for something than dieing for nothing. Brad Johnson and William Dafoe (quite a laid-back, charismatic performance) lead the way as the two pilots then in support is credible turns from Danny Glover (barking out the orders), Tom Sizemore, J. Kenneth Campbell and Ving Rhames.