 🍿🍿🍿 | 🎙️ EPISODE 560: 09.22.22 Starting in 2020, I decided to watch & review the entire Nicolas Cage filmography in alphabetical order. This is 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 – Chapter 26. This movie might be the sole reason why David Gordon Green goes by his full name? But then again, I've never seen Car Trouble (1986) so who's to say who should hold the David Green mantle when it comes to The Movies™? What I do know is that Fire Birds — the only movie brave enough to both ask AND answer the question, "Top Gun, but with helicopters?" — is as forgettable as filmmaking can possibly get. Even at just a shade over 80 minutes, it is a SLOG to get through. It's one of the only pre-2000s movies on the Nicolas Cage filmography I had never even heard of. And for good reason. |
And I don't care to research whether or not that was something that George Bush the First really said or not. It's inclusion speaks volumes and lets you know right away just what kind of movie this is. (SPOILER ALERT: a bad one!).
I just finished watching this and it's amazing how little about it I remember. It's as if it was manufactured in a lab to be THIS instantly forgettable. Lucky (lucky?) for us, I took notes and isolated about 20 clips to show you exactly what I mean. Because that's what we do here on 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢. It can either be our collective joy or it can be my own foolish plight. And in this case, it is decidedly the latter. So let's get it over with, and by let's I mean ME (my dumb-ass)...
So this is a movie about how the U.S. Army decides to start a war in "South America" vs. the "drug cartels" and their plan is to do battle with mercenary helicopter pilots with a team highlighted by Nicolas Cage, Tommy Lee Jones and Sean Young and then arrest all the drug dealers on the ground after they take out the enemy choppers. Got it? About 75% of the film is training sequences involving the grizzled vet Jones, the young hotshot Cage and his fellow pilot/ex-girlfriend/current love interest Young whose entire character is shaped around the fact that HEY! ladies can fly helicopters too!
The action begins with Cage recounting a previous mission against the drug cartels where some of his fellow patriots were shot down. His voice-over is stilted and he frankly seems bored reading these lines because, well, probably, yeah I get it... they're boring af (but the action ain't bad)...
The film makes no point in hiding its political agenda right out of the gate. This is pure War on Drugs / pro-military propaganda and it sucks ass...
If you ever thought, "Hey, what if the War on Drugs was an actual War and what the heck would that look like?" then this is the movie for you. Unfortunately, I don't think that's anyone on earth who wasn't one of the three listed screenwriters here (one of them being Dale Dye, a decorated ex-Marine who actually co-stars here as The General). I'm still in awe over how stupid this premise is. But anyway, they bring in Tommy Lee Jones to oversee a new mission and he is very Tommy Lee Jones-ish...
What even is this voice/cadence? ...
How busy is a three-peckered goat? I don't fucking know. Nobody talks like this. Later that day they throw a surprise birthday party for Tommy Lee Jones and they get him a cool cake...
The next day in the flight simulator, Cage offers Tommy Lee Jones some strawberry gum...
So Cage does the flight sim and, well, he is the greatest...
But then he crashes the sim because he has to use this monocle scope thing and he just can't see through that shit or something. More on this in a bit.
Laundromat flirting scene with Sean Young...
He basically spends most of the movie making advances on Sean Young who is constantly shooting him down. The only saving grace here is Cage in some of these moments. His weird charm sorta salvages things in spurts. He goes to a rock club where Geddy Lee is fronting the worst band I've heard in my life and he gets into a fight with a guy Sean Young is dancing with...
This leads to maybe my favorite interaction in the film. The one where Sean Young says "your mother didn't fly helicopters" ...
Forget the fact that most of that scene felt like pumped-in AOR, the dialogue isn't even B-Movie quality. It's so atrocious that it's funny at times, but it's so unending you stop being able to decipher the humorous from the plain bad. For example, the following morning these two go right back at it during a literal training mission...
Cage is kind of a scum bag in this, ain't he? How much double entendre can you squeeze into one scene? Fire Birds dares to find out!
When he's not sexually harassing Sean Young, Cage is regularly harassing Tommy Lee Jones. He beats him up in a boxing match at the gym and the next day rubs his face in it...
They start ramping up the training at this point: getting recon on the South American drug cartel's bad boy mercenary helicopter pilot "Stoller." This guy is supposed to be the villain but he literally has no lines of dialogue and the actor who played him? This was his only role. Nope, the real "villain" in Fire Birds is DRUGS and throughout it we see a sprinkling of news footage detailing the crack cocaine epidemic sweeping the nation.
In another test mission, Cage has the same problem with his eye that plagued him in the sim. Tommy Lee Jones puts him on probation. Sean Young shows up with some words of encouragement and we get to the heart of what's wrong with Cage's eyes...
Ah, yes, it's an eye dominance problem. Naturally. Also, they keep referring to the training as "the bag" and "passing the bag" like the audience knows what the fuck that is supposed to mean. They literally say "the bag" like a hundred times. Anyway, as it turns out Tommy Lee Johns had the exact same eye issues when he was a younger pilot. So he cures Cage in the only way possible: by tying a DIY periscope to his head with a pair of red panties and having him drive a jeep around the base like a lunatic...
So that's all it took to cure him of that garbage. Conflict resolved! Cage says he doing "piss perfect" in a British accent for no reason...
At this point, they need to ramp up the romantic plot line so they have Sean Young drop all her previous qualms about wanting independence/rightfully thinking Cage is an asshole, etc., etc...
After the most PG sex scene of all-time, they have one more little lover's spat before returning to the base...
Cage passes the final training test with flying colors and a killer one-liner...
They then immediately get reports that the cartel offensive is set to launch. The premise here is so funny and stupid. I repeat: This is a movie for people who thought the War on Drugs was a LITERAL war or would likely become one. I can't even wrap my head around it. We tend to think hysterically whipping up the public into a frenzy over this issue or that is a new concept, but here was something that infected culture to such a degree that A-lister action flicks weren't even immune. (And sure, using Hollywood as a tool for military propaganda was/is hardly a new idea; it's the fusion with the politicized crack cocaine response which is fascinating.) So they finally get their marching orders: Operation Fire Bird, commence. They're going to South America for a helicopter battle with the drug cartel. Don't worry about what country in South American or which drug cartel. Just don't worry about it.
Cage finds out that Sean Young is going on the mission too, and he is not happy...
Then Cage and Tommy Lee Jones have a heart-to-heart that is hilariously interrupted by a preemptive counterstrike by the enemy drug cartel...
War on! I could watch this scene 100 times. This is a 10 out of 10...
Even though they bent over backwards telling the audience that a female can do helicopters just as good as a guy, they reduce Sean Young's character to nothing more than a damsel in distress at the last possible moment when the infamous "Stoller" arrives...
I mean, she literally says, "Oh Jake, save my ass." SMDH, 1990. All the actual helicopter stuff is so chaotic it's hard to follow. "Stoller" kind of looks like Sean Connery. Tommy Lee Jones gets shot down and he's got a broken leg so Sean Young lands her chopper to help him. Cage says that he his co-pilot's mother now? ...
On the "How's this stupid movie gonna end?" bingo card, I bet you didn't have "Tommy Lee Jones teaches Sean Young to make an impromptu DIY rocket launcher and blow up the enemy who now has a stealth bomber ass looking plane in their aresenal" ...
But because Cage is the MAN here, they let him kill the big bad enemy, "Stoller." And that's what he does...
RIP "Stoller."
When they land, they immediately get word that the DEA has arrested all cartel members on the ground! Yippee they won whatever this conflict was supposed to be! The movie ends with Tommy Lee Jones doing his Tommy Lee Jones thing and Cage bickering with Sean Young one final time...
Those crazy lovebirds! Anyway, glad that's over. (ALSO: I realize I fucked up the ratio/embeds of all these clips. I don't care enough to fix it 🙃)
THE VERDICT: 3 CAGES OUT OF 10 • CLICK HERE for all 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 Chapters + Ongoing Rankings.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 559 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 561 ⫸
⫷ EPISODE 559 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 561 ⫸
Fire Birds (released under the alternative title Wings of the Apache) is a 1990 American military action film directed by David Green and produced by William Badalato, Keith Barish and Arnold Kopelson. The storyline was conceived by retired Lt. Colonels Step Tyner and John K. Swensson and retired Marine Capt. Dale Dye and developed into a screenplay written by Paul F. Edwards, Nick Thiel and uncredited David Taylor. The film stars Nicolas Cage, Tommy Lee Jones and Sean Young. Cage is cast as a helicopter pilot attempting to help dismantle a drug cartel in South America. Jones plays his pilot instructor and senior ranked military officer during his flight training, while Young portrays his love interest.It was released on May 25, 1990.
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