Flight of Fury

 (2007)

by Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Steven Seagal must retrieve or destroy a stolen stealth bomber before terrorists use it to deliver a biological bomb.

The film begins with the plus-sized paladin about to have his memory erased by some kind of doctor in some kind of military jail. He escapes with the help of two confederates who have no other function in the plot. Once he escapes, he thwarts a convenience store robbery by killing all the baddies - but not before they panic and shoot all the store clerks. What was he doing in the convenience store? Tracking down baddies for the government? Nah. He just happened to be shopping there when the robbery began, so he took it upon himself to do some killin'. If there's one thing that gets the man upset, it's when somebody interrupts his snack selection.

What does all of that have to do with a stealth bomber? Absolutely nothing. It's about 30 minutes of prologue designed to get Segal into the hands of the general with the missing plane. You see, the local police investigate the robbery and decide that they better call the feds because the full-figured fighter is just more than they can handle. The feds, in turn, call military intelligence. Blah, blah. I would not be at all surprised to find out that the prologue was something left over from a different movie.

Once the general manages to coerce Seagal into the actual mission, the narrative consists almost entirely of four elements:

1) stock flying footage and stock explosion footage purchased from other productions

2) the faces of pilots in cockpits

3) shots of computer screens showing random things "locking on" to other random things

4) shots of command headquarters back in the States, where the military brass deliver expository dialogue so we can understand what the hell is going on with Segal's mission, which would be otherwise incomprehensible.

"How's he doing, Commodore?"

"Sir, the Seal team assigned to back him up has failed to make the rendezvous, and has experienced an 100% casualty rate."

"Then, God help him, he'll have to do it alone."

"But, sir, it's only one man against an Army, and he only has three hours left to (describes complete mission in detail). We better carpet-bomb the area."

"Dammit, Commodore, this is no ordinary man. This is my best multi-chinned pilot."

Back in 2003, when he was really overweight and out of shape, Seagal made two incredibly bad films back-to-back with director Michael Oblowitz. After that he worked out a bit, dropped enough weight to do his own fights again, wrote some of his own script treatments and experienced a period of resurgence. Sadly, that period seems to have ended. The big-boned battler has once again churned out back-to-back disasters with a director named Michael:

Michael Oblowitz

Michael Keusch

The Foreigner ... 2.54 Attack Force ... 2.72
Out For a Kill ... 2.74 Flight of Fury ... 3.42

The IMDb scores in the table above suggest that Flight of Fury isn't as bad as the other three films, but this film's score has been inexplicably polluted by a rash of perfect scores. That's obviously ballot-stuffing. The top 1000 voters at IMDb rate Flight of Fury 2.4, exactly the same score they give to Attack Force. I agree. The film has absolutely no positives and a myriad of negatives:

  • There's very little hand-to-hand combat in Flight of Fury, and none of it is very good. What little there is generally pictures Seagal in head-and-shoulders shots or using an obvious double. Instead of prolonged fights, he tends to knife opponents quickly, and fast editing disguises his girth.

  • The performances are uniformly sub-par. Seagal's own acting now consists entirely of his controlled tough-guy whisper.

  • The film was lensed in Romania, but the story is set in Afghanistan, so all of the extras are Eastern European guys in Afghani mufti, with their faces covered most of the time, presumably to disguise their features.

  • There is no detail in the characterization, and very little in the dialogue.

  • The flying action uses stock footage, as described above. The non-flying action consists entirely of clichés, and the best of that is also stock footage lifted from 1986's Iron Eagle.

  • There's almost no plot detail other than the rough outline I described above, and what little detail there is makes very little sense, perhaps because it was cobbled around existing footage.

  • To top it all off, the cobbled-in plot isn't even original! The storyline of this film is taken directly from another straight-to-vid film called Black Thunder, which came out in 1998. According to IMDb, Flight of Fury it was even called Black Thunder as a working title.

Here's the summary for 1998's Black Thunder:

When the top secret prototype of the Nova Stealth fighter has been stolen, the Pentagon launches a big alarm; the plane shouldn't come into hostile hands. There is only one man who can get the plane back: test pilot Vince Conners. He and his partner Jannick pursue the Nova to Libya but when they land at the site their mission fails. Jannick has been captured and Conners is on the run. Without friends or allies they have to try to find the Nova before they fall into the hands of the military regime and before terrorists can use the plane to bomb a United Nations meeting with nerve gas.

Not only is the plot of Flight of Fury virtually identical, but our portly pilot also has a partner named Jannick - and other character names are also the same as in Black Thunder!

In other words, Flight of Fury consists of footage from one old film, and a plot from another.

A straightforward remake of a recent grade-B Michael Dudikoff movie?

Not even bothering to change the characters' names?

Frankly, it's like the weighty warrior isn't even trying any more.

 

DVD INFO

* widescreen anamorphic

* no meaningful features

 

 

 

 

 

THE CRITICS AND ACADEMIES

There are no major reviews online

THE PEOPLE

   
3.4 IMDB summary (of 10)
B+ Yahoo Movies

THE BOX OFFICE

The film went straight to DVD.

NUDITY REPORT

  • Katie Jones shows her breasts in a lesbian scene which is not only gratuitous, but totally inappropriate in context.

I love it when they go the extra mile to bring me breasts.

Google
 

Our Grade:

If you are not familiar with our grading system, you need to read the explanation, because the grading is not linear. For example, by our definition, a C is solid and a C+ is a VERY good movie. There are very few Bs and As. Based on our descriptive system, this film is a:

E

This one is not even a passable offering for Seagal fans.