Review of Stealth (2005) by Markb. — 21 Jan 2006

Besides being the Year of the Penguin, 2005 will be remembered as the movie year in which moviegoers re-embraced the R-rated movie comedy (Yay!) and rejected the Big, Expensive Action Movie Without A Brain In Its Head (YAY!!) Michael Bay and Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, xXx) are two of the more recent auteurs of this genre; of the two, Cohen is far less offensive because of his sheer unpretentiousness; he's a bubblegum moviemaker who's secure in the knowledge that he IS one, and embraces his essential inner Bazooka Joe-ness.

Just as well that Cohen's latest, about a military superplane that defies orders when it (he?) feels it (he?) has the right to or knows more than its (his?) human operators bombed in theaters, because it's actually fairly effective on DVD as a "six-pack movie": the more of the six-pack you drink the better (or at least less idiotic) it is, and it helps even more if you can get through TWO six-packs while watching it! You don't expect such offbeat talents as screenwriter W.

D. Richter (The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, Home for the Holidays) and playwright/actor Sam Shepard to be anywhere near this (or any other Cohen film) although Shepard is actually quite good as the well-meaning but corrupt force behind the project; otherwise, Stealth comes off as an amiable cross between Blue Thunder and Top Gun without the hysterical semi-alarmism of the former or the obnoxious jingoism of the latter.

Stealth's greatest strength and greatest weakness are actually one and the same: it's smart enough to ask the question of whether war should be waged as a video game or up close and personal (an issue that, in a way, got Bill Maher and Politically Incorrect thrown off ABC) but dumb enough to include so many candy-colored visuals, and take such delight in blowing stuff up real good that it undercuts its own very real, intelligent questions and becomes exactly the same thing it's criticizing.

I'm sure that it's no coincidence that Cohen voice-casts the superplane to sound just like HAL the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey; in fact, I was mildly disappointed that the stealth bomber didn't get around to treating us to a chorus of "A Bicycle Built For Two".