Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Firefox Blu-ray Movie Review

Make My Flight

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 17, 2013

The Cold War was a dangerous time, but it supplied great material for thrillers. American author Tom Clancy built a successful career on it, and his novels became an equally successful movie franchise. Welsh author Craig Thomas also did well with his series of books featuring American pilot Mitchell Gant, but only one film was ever made: 1982's Firefox, directed, produced by and starring Clint Eastwood. Driven by Eastwood's considerable box office clout, and a gala Washington, D.C. premiere organized by the wife of then-Attorney General Ed Meese, the film was a hit. Unfortunately, it hasn't aged well.

For one thing, Firefox's effects by Oscar winner John Dykstra were impressive for the time, but they were about to be superceded by the digital revolution that would transform filmmaking by the end of the decade. More importantly, though, Eastwood as a director has always been more effective at the kind of slow, relentless buildup that characterizes his westerns and the Dirty Harry movies (both those he directed and those he didn't) than the kind of dense, paranoid mosaics that John McTiernan pulled off in The Hunt for Red October or Tomas Alfredson built in the recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The character of Mitchell Gant probably appealed to Eastwood, because he has so much in common with the damaged, ambiguous loners to which The Man with No Name has been attracted throughout his career, but after the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union fell with it, champions like Gant (at least in Eastwood's portrayal) began to look frayed around the edges.

By today's standards, the military hardware in Firefox is antique, and the pacing is glacial. What's intriguing is to watch Eastwood try new things as both actor and director, working with a mostly British and German cast in unfamiliar surroundings (the Austrian city of Vienna doubled for Moscow). The experience would pay off in later films, from the more advanced effects work of Space Cowboys and Hereafter to the intensely modulated drama of Unforgiven, Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby. Today, though, Firefox is more interesting as a transitional work.

Mitchell Gant (Eastwood) is a retired Navy pilot suffering from what would now be called PTSD after being shot down over North Vietnam and taken prisoner by the Vietcong. He suffers recurrent flashbacks of a napalm attack he witnessed while being held captive and now lives in isolation. Despite this handicap, Gant is recruited for a secret government operation in Soviet Russia, because he has qualifications that no one else has. His mother was Russian, and he grew up speaking the language; and he has been trained to fly Russian military aircraft.

The target of the operation is a new stealth Soviet aircraft, the MiG-31, or "Firefox", which is faster than any previous model, invisible to radar and is capable of firing its weapons in response to its pilot's thoughts, which gives the plane an advantage over any conventional fighter. Currently, the plane is only a prototype at the Soviet airbase at Bilyarsk, but once it goes into mass production, NATO intelligence considers it a game-changer. Gant's mission is to steal the prototype.

Over half of Firefox is occupied with the mechanics of Gant's infiltration into Russian through a plan masterminded by an American, Captain Buckholz (David Huffman), and a British spymaster, Kenneth Aubrey (Freddie Jones, giving the part his usual eccentric spin). Impersonating a Western businessman and drug smuggler, Gant must pass under the watchful eyes of the KGB, headed by Chairman Andropov (Wolf Kahler), and the paranoid Soviet military, which has placed Colonel Kontarsky (Kenneth Colley) in charge of security at Bilyarsk. (It may be purely coincidence, but both actors are Lucasfilm veterans: Kahler played the chief Nazi officer in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Colley played Admiral Piett in the original Star Wars trilogy.)

The risky NATO plan depends on assistance from an extensive dissident network inside Russia. Gant's main contact outside Bilyarsk is Pavel (Warren Clarke), an intense and angry man who is clearly dubious about the whole enterprise but does as he's been ordered to get Gant to his destination, despite casualties and sacrifices along the way. Inside Bilyarsk, the chief allies are the three Jewish scientists primarily responsible for designing the Firefox, who know that they will be imprisoned, or worse, as soon as their task is complete: Drs. Pyotr and Natalia Baranovitch (Nigel Hawthorne and Dimitra Arliss) and Dr. Semelovsky (Ronald Lacey, another veteran of Raiders, where he played Gestapo agent Toht). After being smuggled into the pilot's prep area, Gant is supposed to eliminate and replace Soviet Colonel Voskov (Kai Wulff) for a test flight, then simply fly the Firefox out of Russia. In a crucial act of mercy, however, Gant lets Voskov live and merely knocks him unconscious. No good deed goes unpunished.

The film's final half hour is probably its most entertaining, if least credible (which is saying something), as the Russian authorities at Bilyarsk trade recriminations while simultaneously coordinating strategies to recover the stolen Firefox. Adding to the pressure is the reproachful presence of the Soviet First Secretary (Stefan Schnabel, apparently cast for his vague resemblance to then-General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev), who gladly gives orders to destroy the plane rather than let the Americans have it. Most of Dykstra's effects are concentrated here, as Gant pursues various strategies to confuse the enemy about his route. Only one man on the ground, General Vladimirov (Klaus Lowitsch), has the wit to interpret the evidence correctly. Thanks to the General, the Russians are able to send up another plane in a last-ditch effort to stop Gant—because, let's face it, a story about a military plane can't conclude without a sustained aerial dogfight. If you're not sure who wins the engagement, you've never seen an Eastwood film.

Firefox Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Eastwood's regular cinematographer from his early directing career, Bruce Surtees, once again earned his sobriquet, "the Prince of Darkness", in the Moscow scenes of Firefox, many of which occur at night and are underlit in the extreme. The blacks on Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray are deep and solid, but the grain in the areas where we are supposed to see something is frequently heavier than many Blu-ray fans prefer. At least, though, it's a natural-looking grain structure that hasn't been reduced or filtered. Grain is more finely resolved in daylight scenes, but Firefox has never had an especially sharp image, and no artificial sharpening has been applied to the transfer used for this Blu-ray. The image is soft, because that's how it's supposed to be.

The brightest colors occur at the film's opening when Gant is recruited at his retirement retreat and in his memories of Vietnam. Otherwise, the film's palette consists of the drab hues of Soviet life and the conspiratorial offices of military and intelligence services. It's a relief when Gant and the Firefox MiG-31 take off into bright skies filled with fluffy clouds and eventually fly over the gleaming polar ice cap, although these white backgrounds are what so challenged Dykstra and his effects team in the days of optical matte compositing. A few of the process shots used to insert Gant into Moscow backgrounds are glaringly obvious, but this was the best that could be done prior to the digital revolution.

Compression artifacts were not in evidence. The average bitrate is a respectable 22.96, and although additional space was available on the disc, I doubt that a higher bitrate would have improved the film's appearance beyond what it already is.

Firefox Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Firefox was released in both Dolby Stereo and six-track surround for it 70mm blow-up. Whichever source was used for the Blu-ray's DTS-HD MA 5.1 track, the most obvious beneficiary is the final section of the film depicting Gant's escape in the Firefox MiG-31, which provides a loud and immersive roar of flight, with the sonic perspective switching rapidly back and forth from inside and outside the cockpit. Before the plane takes off, the surrounds make themselves felt occasionally for such things as subway trains, cars whizzing by, gunfire, a display of pyrotechnics (those who know the film will recognize what scene I'm referring to) and, of course, Gant's recurring Vietnam flashbacks. Generally, though, Eastwood and his mixers keep the action front-oriented.

Dialogue is very clear, despite the variety of Russian accents affected by English, German and American actors. The score by Maurice Jarre is not one of his best, and it sounds curiously thin and compressed, even when it attempts to soar in triumph.

Firefox Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Eastwood Directs (480i; 1.33:1; 29:57): This made-for-TV documentary covers the making of Firefox and includes a lengthy interview with Eastwood during post-production, as well as footage from the location shoot in Austria and from the premiere in Washington, D.C. It is far more informative than today's typical EPK, providing substantial information about the film's production. With subtitles in English SDH, French and Spanish.



• Theatrical Trailer (480i; 2.40:1, enhanced; 2:27): The alert viewer will notice that most of the trailer's scenes come from the film's final hour. With subtitles in English SDH, French and Spanish.

Firefox Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The year after Firefox was released, author Thomas published a sequel to his novel called Firefox Down!, which he dedicated to Eastwood. He eventually wrote two more novels featuring Mitchell Gant, as well as other characters who first appeared in Firefox, but none have become films. One can understand why the immediate sequel didn't interest Eastwood, because it audaciously imagined a different ending for the story of Gant's mission than the heroic fadeout of both the original novel and the film. Besides, Eastwood had already moved on to other interests. At the end of 1982, he released Honkytonk Man, which flopped, and the following year he directed the most memorable and quotable of the Dirty Harry films (at least since the original), Sudden Impact. Unless you count the explosive auto ride with Charlie Sheen in The Rookie, Eastwood didn't get back into flight until 2000's Space Cowboys.

Firefox may be a relic of its age, but it's essential viewing for anyone interested in the evolution of Eastwood's career, and it features enough interesting performances and memorable moments to make the experience worthwhile. Warner's Blu-ray treatment is a reasonably accurate representation of the film and, as such, is recommended.