Movie Haiku - Stealth

www.sonypictures.com/movies/stealth


Dir: Rob Cohen


Cast: Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, Jamie Foxx, Sam Shepard


Who'd trust talking plane?

stop moving the camera

redefines "dumb film"


WARNING! This review contains spoilers. If you really intend to go and watch this piece of sh*t for yourself then fine, but don't say that I didn't warn you. Okay, so it's a Rob Cohen film. Once upon a time he made Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story which was pretty good, but then he followed it up with The Skulls, The Fast And The Furious and xXx, a triple-whammy of dumb movies which all somehow managed to be successful enough to spawn sequels. So I can't claim ignorance when I sat down to watch his latest effort, I simply expected a dumb action movie. But Stealth is so much worse than I could ever have imagined. It follows a team of three jet pilots, Ben (Lucas), Kara (Biel) and Henry (Foxx) under the command of Capt. Cummings (Shepard), all ready to bomb some innocent civilians at a moment's notice. Their comfy threesome is rudely interrupted by the introduction of EDI, a stealth fighter plane with its own Artificial Intelligence. And this plane can talk and download Incubus songs off the internet, oh yes it can! So, EDI is an experimental plane designed for the army, but when it gets struck by some typical movie lightning it starts to think for itself and - inevitably - turns bad and decides to go off on its own bombing missions. Whoops! Now, having seen the trailer for Stealth I thought I'd seen the entire film condensed into two minutes, but no, the whole pilots vs. evil plane is only the first part of this movie. After EDI's attack on Tajekistan and with Kara ejecting over North Korea, Ben is determined to rescue her (yes, he secretly fancies her), but must first stop EDI - and teach the plane to be good in the process, I kid you not - whilst all the while Capt. Cummings is trying to have them all wiped out to hide any evidence of EDI's existence. You really couldn't make this sh*t up. Well, actually the whole film feels as if they're just making it up as they go along... this really has to be one of the dumbest, most stupid stories ever commited to celluloid. Even the smallest details are hamfisted; when the team go off for a bit of R&R in Thailand, Henry pulls a Thai girl at a temple and is next seen having a long conversation about his job as a pilot... no, no, no, no, no, wrong, wrong, wrong! The whole thing is just lazy, insulting, cynical, and any attempts to make a comment on America's attitude to war are just clumsy and embarassing. This might be bearable with a good director and a decent cast, but sadly Stealth has neither. Rob Cohen shouldn't be allowed to make any more films after this, it really is the worst directed film since Roger Christian thought it would be a good idea to shoot Battlefield Earth with a wonky tripod. In every single shot Rob insists on moving the camera around the scene and zooming in, even if it's just two people having a conversation. The action scenes are the worst, with the camera constantly moving above, below, and around the planes, before zooming in through the cockpit. And this happens every single time the planes are in the air. Remember the shot in The Fast And The Furious where we follow the camera right through the engine as the car is speeding along? You just know he's going to use that same scene in Stealth and he does - repeatedly. Unfortunately this doesn't make the action any more exciting, it just makes everything so frantic and confusing that you have no idea what is going on, and frankly if you suffer with motion sickness then you're gonna need to take a large paper bag with you. I honestly spent half the film muttering, "Stop moving the f***ing camera!" under my breath. Rob also likes explosions. Lots of them. And then there's the cast... Rob continues his track record of casting wooden leading men (see also: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker) by giving the role of Ben to Josh Lucas, a real lump of an actor if ever I saw one. I really liked Jessica Biel in The Rules Of Attraction and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, but she was rubbish in Blade: Trinity and she's clearly out of her depth here as well - there is absolutely no chemistry whatsoever between her and Lucas. As for Oscar Winner Jamie Foxx, well, he just looks embarassed to be there, and it's no surprise when his character is killed off early on - he probably flew his plane into the cliff-face on purpose after reading the rest of the script! What more is there to say? Stealth is hands down the worst film of 2005. It's on par with Battlefield Earth for sheer awfulness, it really is that bad. If you have friends who claim to like this movie then I suggest that you give them a hard slap... or consider changing your friends.

soulmining rating: *