Fire Birds (1990) Touchstone/Action-Adventure RT: 87 minutes Rated PG-13 (language, action violence, some sexual content, drug references) Director: David Green Screenplay: Nick Thiel and Paul F. Edwards Music: David Newman Cinematography: Tony Imi Release date: May 25, 1990 (US) Cast: Nicolas Cage, Tommy Lee Jones, Sean Young, Bryan Kestner, Bert Rhine, Dale Dye, Mary Ellen Trainor, J.A. Preston, Peter Onorati, Gabriel Lopez. Box Office: $14.7M (US)
Rating: *
Once again, I find myself struggling over how many stars I should award a particular movie. The movie in question is Fire Birds, a Top Gun knock-off starring Nicolas Cage, Tommy Lee Jones and Sean Young. In the abstract, it’s bad. The screenplay is one of those Identikit deals, assembled out of familiar parts from other, presumably better movies. It introduces a threat to the American way of life, in this case a South American drug cartel, then pushes it aside with only an occasional reminder until the climax.
Most of the movie is devoted to the training program and a handful of related personal dramas, all badly handled. The acting is terrible. Watching Fire Birds, you can’t believe Cage and Jones went on to win Oscars (Leaving Las Vegas and The Fugitive respectively). The music is cheesy. The score basically consists of that heavily orchestrated, snare drum-heavy music commonly heard in military-themed actioners. The soundtrack contains two Phil Collins songs including a sappy one whose intro is heard every time Cage and Young have a scene together. Even the aerial sequences are nothing special. They’re okay, but the makers don’t do anything that hasn’t already been done in similar movies.
I could go on listing what’s wrong with Fire Birds, but maybe I ought to describe the plot before continuing. Before I do that, I want to call attention to director David Green’s (Buster) creative decision to kick things off with a quote from then-President Bush about the war against drugs. Normally, I’d call him out for including such blatant political propaganda, but Fire Birds is such a ridiculous movie that it’s impossible to take any of it seriously.
As to the story, it purportedly centers on a joint DEA-US Army operation to dismantle one of the largest cartels operating out of South America. First, they must recruit a few good men (and one good woman) to train on the newest attack helicopter, the Apache. It’s the only aircraft capable of matching the firepower of the Scorpion flown by the cartel leader. It’s already taken out a couple of Black Hawks and Cobras. The “top gun” of the team is Jake Preston (Cage), a cocky and overconfident sort usually played by Tom Cruise. The flight instructor is veteran pilot Brad Little (Jones) who keeps hounding his superiors to be included in the mission. Also on the team is Billie Lee Guthrie (Young, No Way Out) who’s revealed to be Preston’s ex-girlfriend. He still has feelings for her, she claims not to feel the same way, you know the drill.
From here on in, Fire Birds strictly adheres to formula by touching on the following tried-and-true story elements:
(1) The relationship between Little and Preston. The senior officer is simultaneously impressed and flustered by the gifted young pilot.
(2) The rekindling of Preston and Billie’s romance. It’s complicated by his belief that a woman isn’t cut out to be a pilot. Naturally, she takes offense to that.
(3) Preston is a very good pilot who has difficulty using the Apache’s visual input function. It’s revealed that he suffers from a left eye dominance disability which is easily corrected by having Little make him drive around the base with one eye covered by a makeshift periscope.
(4) Little wants to be an active participant in the mission, but some express concern that he may be too old.
During this time, we get a few reminders of the cartel situation like news stories on TVs and Little’s superiors reminding him he doesn’t have a lot of time to whip his group into shape. A major deal is supposed to go down in just days so the training has to be accelerated. One can only suspend disbelief so far before it can go no further.
Fire Birds is embarrassingly jingoistic and about as sophisticated as a GI Joe cartoon. It’s not so much a movie as it is an extended Army recruitment ad. The scenes of the soldiers training feel like instructional films (the You and Your Apache series). I will concede the Apaches are pretty cool, but I wish there had been more scenes of them in combat. Sadly, Fire Birds doesn’t really deliver in that area. The opening scene and the climax, that’s it. Even then, the scenes aren’t all that exciting. I’ll be nice and say they’re at least competently edited and photographed.
The dialogue is woeful with such lines as “This operation will be a failure if we all die.” and “When we have mastered these tactics, we will use them to seek out and confront the forces of evil and kill ‘em deader than hell!” The clear winner, however, is Billie who gets to say, “Oh Jake, save my ass.” after her aircraft is severely damaged in a dogfight with the bad guy. This occurs just ten minutes (screen time) after they have a heated argument at the base over her taking part in the mission. In that scene, we get a full display of Cage’s trademark acting style when he shouts, “WHY …. IS IT SO HARD …. FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND …. THAT I JUST DON’T WANT YOU TO GET HURT!” at the top of his lungs. He was wearing shades, but I assume his eyes were bugging out as per usual.
Fire Birds is an emotionally hollow viewing experience. Remember how all the girls cried when Goose died in Top Gun? Well, nary a tear is likely to be shed when Preston’s best friend’s meets the same fate. His name is Breaker (Kestner, The Running Man) and while he shows up in a handful of scenes, we never get to know him well enough to care when he meets his demise. Character development doesn’t appear to be a priority in Fire Birds as all we get are character types right out of the Basic Screenwriting 101 textbook. The same can be said for story development as none of the aforementioned elements get more than a superficial and cursory treatment.
Fire Birds is a bad movie on virtually every level and fully deserving of its one-star rating. However, it has this strange watchability factor that I can only attribute to how unintentionally hilarious it is. It might have done better box office if the studio had the foresight to market it as a spoof instead of a straight action picture. Some of it is actually funnier than Hot Shots. In that respect, Fire Birds is worth at least one viewing. It has more laughs than many of today’s intentional comedies. I almost gave it more than one star for this reason, but common sense ultimately prevailed. No matter how unintentionally funny it is, it’s still terrible and fully deserving of a single star.
