Firefox (1982)

Are you ready for Clint Eastwood as a Jewish Vietnam-vet pilot who 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 anti-radar device that is invisible and can enable the pilot to 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 is composed of expositional dialogue accompanied and illustrated by graphs, maps and charts.

Clint Eastwood speaking Russian is unintentionally hilarious, and the last half hour ends up just another cockpit movie, with the Russians in hot pursuit of the stolen plane (more graphs, maps and charts) while Big Clint delivers a muttered dialogue beneath his breath 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