Are you ready for Clint Eastwood as a Vietnam vet and former Army pilot who lives in seclusion in Alaska, speaks Russian and has periodic epileptic seizures?
Mitchell Gant, Eastwood’s shell-shocked pilot, is drafted by unidentified secret agents to be smuggled into Russia, defy the KGB, steal a sophisticated MIG-31 aircraft from Russia and deliver it to NATO (represented by, of all people, Freddie Jones).
The plane travels at six times the speed of sound and can do everything but make stroganoff.
It is even equipped with an invisible anti-radar device that lets the pilot zero in on a bomb target without even pressing a button, feeding info into a computer bank that bombs the city or continent below through brain waves in the pilot’s flight helmet.
Luckily, Gant can think in Russian (his mother was Russian, you see) and can therefore operate the thought controls.
The code name for this superstar missile is “Firefox”. That’s about all you need to know. Practically the entire film consists of expositional dialogue, accompanied and illustrated by graphs, maps, and charts.
In addition to starring in Firefox, Eastwood also produced and directed it.
Eastwood takes a dim if reassuring view of the Russians and the Cold War. The superweapon, we learn, is the work of Soviet-Jewish superscientists, who play a key part in the Allied intelligence plan.
“What is it with you Jews?” Gant asks one of the men who aids him inside the Soviet Union. “Don’t you ever get tired of fighting city hall?”
Nearly everyone who assists in the planenapping is promptly bumped off. They die in such numbers, and with so little emotion, that even the screenplay seems to become self-conscious about it.
“Why are you prepared to die?” Mitchell Gant asks one fellow. The answer: “It’s a small thing compared to my resentment of the K.G.B.”
Clint Eastwood speaking Russian is unintentionally hilarious, and the last half hour becomes just another cockpit movie, with the Russians in hot pursuit of the stolen plane (more graphs, maps, and charts) while Big Clint mutters dialogue to his control panel.
Mitchell Gant
Clint Eastwood Kenneth Aubrey
Freddie Jones Captain Buckholz
David Huffman Pavel Upenskoy
Warren Clarke Semelovsky
Ronald Lacey Colonel Kontarsky
Kenneth Colley General Vladimirov
Klaus Löwitsch Pyotr Baranovich
Nigel Hawthorne First Secretary
Stefan Schnabel General Brown
Thomas Hill Major Lanyev
Clive Merrison Lt. Colonel Voskov
Kai Wulff Natalia
Dimitra Arliss Walters
Austin Willis Captain Seerbacker
Michael Currie
Director Clint Eastwood
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It is even equipped with an invisible anti-radar device that lets the pilot zero in on a bomb target without even pressing a button, feeding info into a computer bank that bombs the city or continent below through brain waves in the pilot’s flight helmet.
