Firefox (1982) *

The 1980's were not great to Clint Eastwood. For every good movie he did during the decade, there was another that was borderline horrible. You know their names: Pink Cadillac. City Heat. White Hunter, Black Heart. Holding a special place in this list of Eastwood flops from the Reagan era is Firefox, a film that's dull as hell and is the worst miscasting of Clint Eastwood's career.

The film is about a mission to steal a new Russian jet called Firefox, which is able to achieve obscene speeds and runs just by the pilot thinking. That means you have to get a pilot to sneak into to Russia that is the same build, great at flying, and can speak Russian. That narrows he list down to Mitchell Gant (Clint Eastwood), a former pilot in Vietnam living with shell shock (if you don't know what that is, please look up the George Carlin bit) that fits the criteria perfectly. It's up to Gant and the Moscow underground to get him to the plane so that he can steal it for the USA.

The first thing I noticed watching this film is the number of people willing to die so that Eastwood can steal this plane. It's not like it's the atomic bomb or you're going to stop mass genocide- it's a damn plane. We'll have the Japanese build one that's smaller, faster, and better. Don't sacrifice yourself.

Basically, the entire movie is a cat and mouse game. The KGB are going to get him and....................oh, Eastwood escapes yet again. That's the movie. Over and over again. What should have been a MacGuffin plot in a James Bond film is now a full blown movie with Clint Eastwood as the super spy. But he isn't. It's Clint Eastwood. He isn't sneaky and able to slip through the cracks. Let's imagine Dirty Harry trying to be sneaky. Doesn't work, does it? Eastwood's legend is the guy that roars in, guns blazing with witty remarks against his dumbfounded superiors. Firefox doesn't do that and shows Eastwood in the uncomfortable state of an unstable spy behind the Iron Curtain. It's a failure for the legend.

Sadly, he also directed this film too and with the special effects sequences at the end and the espionage plot throughout he fails to keep our interest. We're just bored as hell and when the big finish starts we're treating to some of the worst special effects seen in the 1980's. You have to remember that this film came out the same year as E.T. and was sandwiched between two Star Wars films and the other effects heavy films of the early '80's. Firefox's effects are laughable.

This film is for Eastwood completists only! It's an artifact. It's a legend stretching himself too much into a role that in no way suits him. This film is a complete disaster. A true plane crash. (Hardy-har-har)