Falcon Down (2001)

I tuned into FALCON DOWN looking for some hot supersonic action, but what I got was a very talkative and very little action STV picture about a guy (familiar TV face Dale Midkiff) who at the government's urging helps to steal a new stealth-type bomber, only to find himself double- and triple-crossed when some bad guys plan to sell the thing to the Chinese. Jennifer Rubin, Whilliam Shatner and Judd Nelson are along for the ride. Well, actually, Shatner stands in one place in an ill-defined military office and talks to Midkiff on and off throughout the movie. I thought maybe when the aircraft crash-landed on an Arctic ice floe and then ended up underwater, something might finally happen, but very little actually does. Stick with STEALTH with Josh Brolin or that neat little high-flying knockoff of DIE HARD, 1992's INTERCEPTOR with Andrew Divoff.

Everybody went slumming for paychecks in this amateurish "Firefox" clone. The surprising thing is that writer & director Phillip J. Roth and his three scenarists, Jonathan Raymond, Jon Meyer, and Terri Neish, weren't sued for copyright infringement. "Falcon Down" appropriates the plot of Clint Eastwood's "Firefox" and part of the plot of "Firefox" novelist Craig Thomas' sequel "Firefox Down." Watching this improbable aerial thriller once must have convinced the "Firefox" people to forego any lawsuit. "Falcon Down" is abysmal from take-off to landing and wastes the talents of Cliff Robertson, William Shatner, and Judd Nelson. The opening credits are enough to turn you off as we watch a scanner locate different parts of the Earth and then watch as the names of cast and crew emerge for what seems forever. The special effects just barely make the grade, probably because the jets are filmed against night skies. A perfunctory romance between leading man Dale Midkiff and soap opera beauty queen Sandra Ferguson barely heats up."Falcon Down" opens with insubordinate Captain Hank Thomas (Dale Midkiff of CBS-TV's "The Magnificent Seven") and Captain Bobby Edwards (Ken Olandt of "Digital Man") flying at night. They disobey their superior officer, Major Robert Carson (William Shatner of "Star Trek") and enter forbidden airspace. No sooner have they trespassed than some inexplicable force blinds Captain Edwards and his jetfighter crashes. Not long afterward a 747 encounters the same effect, similar to electrocution, with rays wriggled all over the aircraft fuselage before it crashes and 200 people perish. When Thomas demands to know what happened to Edwards, Major Carson refuses to divulge any details and brings Thomas up on court-martial charges. Three years later, after the Air Force has dishonorably discharged him, Thomas is working with his father, Buzz Thomas (Cliff Robertson of "633 Squadron"), who has gone into debt and needs $200-thousand to bail him out. Thomas' nemesis from yesteryear shows up and makes our protagonist an offer that he cannot refuse. It seems that a top secret supersonic jet--the Falcon--with a special combat weapons system needs to be stolen and Carson is shelling out the cash. He represents a group of C.I.A agents, including Sharon (Jennifer Rubin) and Harold Peters (Judd Nelson), who need to steal it. Thomas is such an idiot that he believes them. They break into the plant and steal the jet. When U.S. Air Force interceptors scramble and come after them, Peters activates the micro-wave weapon and starts knocking them off. During the aerial firefight, the Falcon takes a bullet in its wing tank and starts losing fuel. Thomas crash lands the jet on the ice cap while a Red Chinese sub with Major Carson on board cruises underwater toward them for a rendezvous. Unfortunately, for the villains, the plane sinks with the pilots and the traitors on board. The Red Chinese had planned on towing the jet underwater back to their base, but efforts to tow the plane fail and it drags the sub down to destruction.If this plot synopsis makes "Falcon Down" sound provocative enough to watch, look out! Director Phillip Roth never generates any suspense and the dialogue is as forgettable as the plot is preposterous. Roth appears to have cloned some of the imagery from "Firefox," such as the shot where the jet wheels out of the hanger before take-off. Jennifer Rubin keeps her clothes on the entire time and adds nothing to the plot. Dale Midkiff looks hopeless as a so-called 'ladies man' in a movie that went straight to video and has nothing to distinguish it. Dull, dull, dull! I bought my DVD copy of "Falcon Down" for $2.00 plus tax from Movie Gallery during a discount sale. If I had known how egregious this pseudo-thriller was, I'd have put it back on the shelf.

Just a comment on the trivia bit: The Valkyrie supersonic bomber is a long fuselage with a delta wing at the root and canards at the cockpit area. The Valkyrie is 180 feet long; the Falcon is 49 feet. The Valkyrie has six engines, the Falcon has one. The Valkyrie does not resemble the Falcon in the slightest, not even the Dassault Falcon. I do believe that the trivia bit just may be a little off.Now I have to come up with more lines of text so that it will make 10 lines -- go figure. Now I have to come up with more lines of text so that it will make 10 lines -- go figure. Now I have to come up with more lines of text so that it will make 10 lines -- go figure. Now I have to come up with more lines of text so that it will make 10 lines -- go figure.

Film...the final insult. These are the voyages of the aircraft "Falcon." Her 2-hour mission: To revisit tired, old clichés, to seek out the phone-it-in skills of William Shatner and Judd Nelson, to hammily go where too many action films have gone before!Seriously, folks, AVOID THIS FILM AT ALL COSTS. I saw it on the Action Channel, and although it purported to be a thriller, it was bloody funny. Not that it intended to be, mind you. However, with the talents of William Shatner (Does anyone even remember he debuted with Yul Brenner in "The Brothers Karamozov?") and Judd Nelson (the jock in "The Breakfast Club," now playing a computer geek with a gun), a penchant to use every cliché convention in the book (the psycho cowboy who lives only to shoot, the overbearing use of "videotaped" confession segments --often with NO RELATION TO THE DAMN PLOT), and writers who have no conception of the laws of physics or how a bloody airplane works, I can do nothing but laugh or whimper -- "limper," maybe? In the end, all I can say is that it made no sense. It was, to steal from a far superior writer "A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."