I don’t know what it is about box-office bombs, but I’m as helplessly attracted to watching them as motorists are to gawking at roadside accidents. I guess I have to see for myself if a movie is as bad as all the critics and viewers say. This doesn’t really make sense, though, since I’ve never (as in not one single time) liked a movie that critics widely panned. There have been countless Oscar-winners and “classics” that I’ve hated despite all the critical acclaim, but I haven’t liked a single bomb that I’ve broken down and watched. Not Alexander. Not Gigli. Not Pluto Nash, or The Four Feathers, or The Postman, or anything like that.
You’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now and wouldn’t want to waste my time watching even more drive, but strangely enough, that’s not the case. Which brings me to my latest review, the 2005 box-office bomb called Stealth. After squirming restlessly through the entire two-hour running time, all I have to say is that my streak is still intact.
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): I’m going to keep this short and sweet, unlike the film itself. Basically, the story centers around three elite Navy fighter pilots (no, this isn’t Top Gun) who have been chosen to take part in an experimental program that consists of them flying missions with a state-of-the-art stealth drone knowns as EDI (pronounced “Eddie”. The pilots, Lt. Ben Gannon (played by Josh Lucas), Lt. Kara Wade (Jessica Biel), and Lt. Henry Purcell (Jamie Foxx) have reservations about the drone, but obviously they have to follow orders.
It turns out that they were correct to have concerns because the drone plane places its own survival above everything else (no, it isn’t HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey). This survival instinct, coupled with the A.I.’s objective to learn from the pilots it’s flying with, soon leads to an out of control machine that chooses its own targets, including one in a breakaway Russian state which, if hit, could lead to a major war.
The rest of the film then deals with Lt. Gannon’s attempts to reign in EDI, as he soon becomes the only one available to do so. Fortunately for everyone involved, EDI has a change of heart (after a lightning strike, no less) and decides to do the right thing.
My Reaction: The plot summary I just wrote doesn’t do justice to the sheer inanity, improbability, and impossibility of Stealth. It’s been a long time since I’ve come across a movie that failed on so many levels. First of all, who is Josh Lucas and what genius decided to cast him as the lead in a $130 million film? With that kind of budget, there should definitely be a big-name star attached to the project so there will be a decent shot of recouping the investors’ money. Wow.
Second, I just have to say that the flight sequences featured some of the cheesiest special effects I’ve ever seen in a film with this kind of budget. I felt like I was watching a video game half the time — and no, that’s not a good thing.
Third, there were so many logic-defying plot points in this film that I had trouble keeping track of them all. I do remember that a good number of them involved Lt. Wade’s mid-air ejection, landing, and subsequent attempts to elude the North Korean army until her rescue (oh, I just thought of another film Stealth borrowed from: Behind Enemy Lines). All of those scenes were incredibly laughable, from the way she was hit by debris from her exploding plane to the way she survived for days with no food, dirty water, and a bullet in her shoulder from a sniper rifle. Uh huh.
Overall, Stealth was a terrible experience in every conceivable way. I give this movie 3.0 stars out of 10 and am advising you not to bother wasting 2 hours of your life. Trust me on this!