Fire Birds Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		2.0
Audio		1.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		1.5

Fire Birds Blu-ray Movie Review

Crash and burn.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman June 27, 2015

Fire Birds is one of the sorriest rah-rah, go-Army movies ever made, a sad excuse for a Top Gun knock-off, and an all-around lazy, uninspired flick in every way imaginable. An astonishingly bad script, dull characterization, a sparkless romance, insipid action, and uninspired angles are but the tip of the iceberg for a production that bombs at every opportunity, that never gets off the ground, to use a metaphor appropriate to its helicopters-in-action storyline. It's amazing that a movie about one of the great weapons in the modern military arsenal -- the highly maneuverable, armed-to-the-teeth, technologically dazzling Apache helicopter -- could fall so flat, but it's proof that even a great subject alone does not make a movie. Perhaps the film might have sold better were it released a few months later after the first Gulf War made it something of a television star and household name, but then again a brighter spotlight might have only accentuated the film's inherent, and killer, flaws that blow the movie up faster than a Hellfire missile.

I AM THE GREATEST! I AM THE GREATEST! I AM THE GREATEST!

The United States government has had it with the drug trade. The White House has decreed that all of America's military might will be made available to any nation that wishes to erase the dangerous drug cartels from within its borders. One of the key tools in the war on drugs is the advanced Apache helicopter, and there's nobody more qualified to pilot it than hotshot Jake Preston (Nicolas Cage). He's not fully qualified to operate the chopper quite yet, so he travels to Fort Mitchell where he studies under the tutelage of Brad Little (Tommy Lee Jones) both in real birds and inside an advanced simulator. But Preston quickly realizes that he may not be cut out for the task; the Apache requires he wear a helmet with a fixed eyepiece over his right eye, but he's left eye dominant. He's having trouble processing the information it's sending to his brain. As he tries to sort out the problem, he engages in a romantic relationship with an old fling (Sean Young) who also happens to be stationed at Mitchell.

If a movie's primary conflict stems from the question of whether a man is right-eye or left-eye dominant, it's in a heap of trouble. When the bad guy is some random enemy helicopter pilot the audience knows only from a few shots of him plopped into his bird's cockpit, it's in a heap of trouble. When the hero is a monotone clown whose moment of glory comes from repeatedly yelling "I am the greatest" in a graphically prehistoric simulator before virtually crashing and burning because the eyepiece is on the wrong side, it's in a heap of trouble. Fire Birds feels like it was patched together at a moment's notice, sort of like when a student drinks the weekend away and realizes at 11:00 PM that he has a major paper due at eight o'clock sharp the next morning. The movie at least puts together a coherent plot -- bad guys bad, good guys good, good guys must train to kill skilled bad guy, conflict ensues at the end, romance drizzles over movie -- but does so in the most minimalist way possible, essentially reworking Top Gun for helicopters and incorporating characters who are dramatically less dynamic than their Miramar counterparts but trying to fill the same roles, whether in the classroom or the bedroom, whether in training or in the heat of battle. The movie absolutely tanks in every way; even the big climactic action scene takes places in dullsville. But the real problem here? The acting. Oh, my, the acting.

It's always a challenge to play a badly written part, and there's a long list of good actors who have turned in bad performances under the burden of an empty character (and a very, very short list of actors who have turned nothing into gold). Nicolas Cage, however, just might take the cake for "worst performance of a lousy character." Cage rarely reaches beyond monotone, setting a terrible precedent in an early monologue at a debrief that's like the actor working on life support, flatly, unenthusiastically, and without a hint of personality reciting lines in a tone and pace like a layman working through a complex science text without having slept for 72 hours. It's one of the most jarringly flat deliveries ever captured in a professional film and one that only ever goes to the other, overly flamboyant extreme when he's practically frothing at the mouth in praise of himself in the simulator. The performance might be a good sedative if nothing else, and his supporting cast -- even the venerable Tommy Lee Jones -- is equally adept at putting audiences to sleep, all of them hamstrung with a bad script and essentially given no choice but to turn in glazed-over performances defined by poor timing, lifeless readings, and an apparent failure to grasp character basics (though, in their defense, there's nothing in the script of value).

Fire Birds Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Fire Birds doesn't impress on Blu-ray. The 1080p transfer is a relic of the past, presenting a flat, drab, and lifeless image. Details lack much more than very basic crispness and lifelike accuracy; simple skin and clothing textures are evident in close-ups, rivets and other material details on helicopters are fairly reproduced, and image clarity generally satisfies at a very base level. There's no sense of true, organic filmmaking here. Grain often looks processed out of the picture, save for a few occurrences of unsightly spiking. Colors are dull; the movie isn't littered with bright hues to begin with, but the relatively lifeless army greens and earthy terrains lack lifelike flavor. A few splashes of brighter color, coming largely by way of red underpants and various products lining a grocery store shelf, are baseline satisfactory. Black levels appear washed out and fatigued. Flesh tones push mildly warm. Macroblocking is a frequent problem, as are pops and speckles throughout. This is no doubt not what fans wanted to see out of Fire Birds, but for a bargain release the transfer's lower quality doesn't come as a surprise.

Fire Birds Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Fire Birds features a lackluster 192kbps Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack which scrapes the bottom of the barrel of acceptable quality. Nothing stands apart, nothing impresses. The opening title anthem struggles with clarity and front side spacing, coming across as muddled and lazy, presenting David Newman's score with nothing approaching lifelike vitality. There's minimal energy, weight, or immersion to action effects. Helicopter rotors fail to present with any kind of authority. Explosions are lifeless and come absent any sort of heft. The lack of surround channels, or even a wider, more robust front, hurts the movie's action when buzzing helicopters never seem to move with the action. Dialogue is at least generally acceptable in terms of placement and prioritization, though it, too, sometimes struggles with pure clarity.

Fire Birds Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Fire Birds contains no supplemental content.

Fire Birds Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Fire Birds can't even boast quality production values. The movie looks cheap and seems only magnified by the poorly constructed support pieces, chiefly its awful script and the resultant bad performances. If nothing else, it makes Top Gun look all the better in comparison, and it does strike just the right balance of "bad" and "humorous" and "watchable" that it might make a good party movie for some MST3K-style lambasting. Mill Creek's featureless Blu-ray delivers bland video and low-end audio. Rent it for a laugh.