Exploding Helicopter

Sgt. Jay Handlin (Jerry Trimble) and Sgt. Julie Parish (Karen Sheperd) are cops with an ongoing rivalry about who is the better martial artist. But could there be sparks flying in the romantic department as well?

While trying to figure this out, the pair travel to Africa of all places bring down crime lord Alex Gatelee (Michel Qissi). Naturally, it’s no straightforward task to nab their man. Julie is kidnapped and Jay has to fight off countless goons and the sexual advances of Gatelee’s randy henchwoman Myra Bolo (Ashley Hayden). After enlisting the help of some locals, our heroes martial arts abilities are put to the ultimate test when they face Gatelee in the final showdown. Will Jay be Handlin business? Find out today...?

Unlike many of Jerry Trimble’s films, Terminator Woman (1993) is professionally-shot and competently made. Which may be no coincidence given that, unlike many of Jerry Trimble’s films, it’s not made by Roger Corman. That being said, the pacing is off making the story rather dull at times. If they’d lopped about 10 minutes off, this whole outing might have had a bit more verve.

The leads, though, are all top-notch. You’ve got fan-favorite Trimble, who - and we mean this as a compliment - resembles a more meat-heady Emilio Estevez. Alongside, you’ve got fellow fan-favourite Sheperd - an enjoyable screen presence whose excellent martial arts skills are wonderfully captured here. And finally, there’s Qissi (who also directed the movie) as a very convincing baddie. So those are the movie’s strengths and weaknesses for you, and they fight it out - like everyone else on screen - throughout the running time.

Generally speaking, we don’t really care for ‘Africa slogs’, as we call them, but this one is tolerable, thanks mainly to the aforementioned leads. The Trimble/Sheperd team-up was an inspired choice, reminiscent of similar kick-ass pairings such as Richard Norton and Cynthia Rothrock in the Rage and Honor diptych, or Steven Vincent Leigh and Sophia Crawford in Sword of Honor (1996). If nothing else, Terminator Woman plays to the strengths of the leads, with plenty of fights and good-natured stupidity.

Judging by the large “TW” logo on the US VHS box art, perhaps the filmmakers were attempting to establish a brand to be used in subsequent films. Maybe they hoped in the future people would stand around at the water cooler asking, “Have you seen the latest TW movie? It’s awesome.”

While this movie prediction may not have come to pass, anyone who foresaw a fiery demise for the film’s helicopter will not come away disappointed. You’ll have to bear with us as this one’s a little tricky to explain.

At the film’s climax, Hayden tries to make her getaway on speedboat. Shepherd and one of the friendly locals, pursue in a helicopter they’ve commandeered. After catching-up, Shepherd leaps from the chopper into the motorboat for a chop-socky showdown with Hayden.

After biffing away at each other for a bit, Hayden decides to play dirty, grabs the boat’s flare gun and tries to shoot Shepherd. The shot misses, but the flare arcs high into the sky and falls lands – with ridiculous improbability – back on the boat on top of a box of explosives. (I know, what where the odds?)

Shepherd yells to her friend to jump from the chopper, before diving over the side of the boat. The flare detonates the TNT causing such a huge explosion that it wipes out the helicopter as well.

Artistic merit

We really enjoyed this chopper fireball. Its destruction is quite convoluted, but that just serves to make it more fun. The sequence plays with our expectations as initially you think that the flare will directly blow-up the helicopter. It’s a cool touch to use the explosion of the speedboat to destroy it.

Exploding helicopter innovation

First known use of an exploding speedboat to destroy a helicopter.

Do passengers survive?

Yes. Shepherd and her friend both survive having jumped off the chopper at different points. The unfortunate pilot though is never seen again.

Positives

The whole film is very ‘nineties’. What do we mean by that? Well, in the midst of all the action, Trimble finds time to perform a ‘spontaneous’ shirtless martial arts workout alone in his hotel room. Anyone who’s seen a similarly underdressed Jeff Speakman prance about to Snap’s The Power in A Perfect Weapon or William Sadler as Colonel Stuart in Die Hard 2 will know the form.

Negatives

Maybe it’s an African thing or maybe it’s a nineties or action movie thing, but there’s a club in the film called Backlash. It’s hard to imagine why you would call a dance club “Backlash”. It’s a bit too angry for us.

Interesting fact

Karen Sheperd is the Terminator Woman, Steve Railsback is the Termination Man, and George Segal is the Terminal Man. Quite where all this leaves Mr Schwarzenegger is anyone’s guess.

This review is a guest post by our friends Brett and Ty from the great website Comeuppance Reviews. They're dedicated to celebrating action movies from the eighties VHS era. Check out their website and discover some forgotten gems.

There was a time when it seemed Robert Redford would stay forever young.

While his contemporaries slowly wrinkled and went bald, Redford remained supernaturally preserved. His boyish face, framed by that lustrous golden fop of hair, seemed to elude the ravages of time.

But eventually, Father Time did catch up with him. The craggy lines came, his sturdy posture started to hunch a little, and gradually that perfect, bouncing blonde coiffure started to look like a mockery of the ravaged features below.

Sadly, the only person who didn’t seem to notice any of this was Bob himself.

Oblivious to the fact that his face was starting to resemble a wedding cake left out in the rain, he kept right on choosing classic young man roles. First, there was The Natural (1984), where a 48-year old Redford (already 15 years too old for the role) outrageously appears in a flashback as his character’s 18-year-old self. Less Sundance Kid, more ‘Sundance, who are you Kiddin’?’

Worse was 1990’s Havana (the famously duff Cuban rehash of Casablanca) where viewers were asked to believe the beautiful young starlet Lena Olin would be powerless before the raw magnetism of Redford – whose face by now was looking as worn and leathery as a battered chesterfield sofa.

It wasn’t until Indecent Proposal (1993) that Redford himself finally realised the game was up. When the only way you can get Demi Moore into bed is by offering her a million dollars, you know your days as a twinkly-eyed lady-killer are over. Following this, Bob promptly took his crow’s feet behind the camera to continue his film career as a director.

All of which, by round-about route, brings us to Spy Game (2001), a film which saw an older, wiser, age-appropriate Redford return to acting. He plays a veteran CIA agent who’s just about to toddle off into retirement.

But on his ‘last day at work’ (see Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, Robert Duvall in Falling Down etc), he learns that his protégé (played by Brad Pitt) has been captured by the Chinese government while carrying out an unauthorised mission.

Fearing a diplomatic incident, the CIA’s spineless bosses want to wash their hands of Pitt and let the dastardly Chinese execute him. Will Redford find a way to rescue his friend? And can he do it before the leaving speeches and carriage clock presentation?

Given that Redford is playing a retiree, some viewers might be tempted to sit back and relax, happy in the knowledge that any age-related embarrassment will not be on the menu. Over-confident fools!

Ever enthusiastic to grapple with such an elastic concept as time, it turns out our Bob has picked a film that’s riven with multiple decade-spanning flashbacks. So, we’re barely out of the opening credits before Redford's teleported back 20 years to events during the Vietnam War.

Facing this challenge, most actors would use a little judicious hair-tinting or forgiving soft-focus camerawork to help portray their younger self. Not our Bobbie. He simply dons a Seventies-era flared collar shirt in the ironclad belief that he still doesn’t look a day over forty. (Note: at this point, he was 65.A pensioner. More Cocoon than Platoon material.) It’s patently ridiculous, but all you can do is sit back and admire the chutzpah of the man.

It’s hard to fathom where such copper-bottomed self-confidence comes from, but we perhaps touched on the real reason earlier – it’s that incredible bouffant.

While every other male Hollywood barnet has slowly thinned or greyed over the decades, or simply grown implausible (Stallone, for example, looks like he’s wearing a black woolly cap), Redford’s magnificently-coiffured mop has remained perfectly preserved atop his head.

Each time he looks in the mirror and sees that golden thicket, he must think he’s immortal. Perhaps somewhere in an attic there’s a painting of a balding, greying Redford, but with a face as smooth as a baby’s backside.

And speaking of things that don’t get old, what more timeless movie thrill is there than an exploding helicopter?

This takes place during the infamous Vietnam flashback where Redford orders Pitt to assassinate a top NKVD official. While Pitt lies in wait for his target, he’s spotted by a gook helicopter which opens fire on him. Pitt returns fire with a machine gun, damaging the chopper’s engine.

The wounded whirlybird spins slowly towards the ground before disappearing behind a small hill. We hear a crash and a huge fireball suddenly erupts into the sky. Charlie don’t surf, and after this chopper fireball, he don’t fly either.

Artistic merit

You can’t fault the explosion which is a spectacularly large mushroom cloud of reds, yellows and oranges. But, marks have to be deducted for not actually showing the helicopter explosion.

Having the chopper disappear behind a convenient piece of geography is a tired old cheat we liked to see ended. Surely, there’s a Hollywood special effects union that could take action?

Exploding helicopter innovation

Both method (gunfire) and location (Vietnam) have all been done before. Even the fact that helicopter explosion takes place in a flashback has been done before.

Positives

Viewers of a certain vintage (particularly those dumbfounded by modern gadgetry) will experience a retro thrill at seeing a real-life pager play an integral role in the film.

For younger readers, a pager was a bit like a mobile phone on which you could receive, but not send, very limited text messages. Until the early 1990s, they were seen as the height of twentieth century communications technology. But kids, before you start feeling smug, in 20-years everyone’s going to think all this Twitterbook and Facetweeting you do is a bunch of backward tomfoolery. You’ve been warned.

Negatives

In recent years, James Bond and Jason Bourne have popularised a whizz bang view of the espionage world. One where agents hack into top secret files with a few seconds of computer wizardry, dispose of the guards with their mixed martial arts skills before parkouring their way to safety.

Spy Game, though, paints a decidedly old-school picture of the world of espionage. One where fragments of intelligence are painstakingly pieced together after hours spent poring over dusty brown folders.

Which therefore makes the choice of Tony Scott to direct utterly perplexing. Famed for his fidgety camerawork, rapid cutting and over the top approach to filmmaking, he would seem the perfect choice for the latest Tom Clancy rather than this Le Carre-esque tale of spycraft.

Interesting fact

The exploding helicopter sequence isn’t the only scene in the film where the producers looked to save money on the chopper related budget of the film. According to IMDB, Tony Scott wanted extra money in order to use a helicopter to film a scene that takes place on the roof of a tower block.

When the producers refused, Scott used his own money to pay for a helicopter. I just wish he’d thrown the money at the chopper fireball scene instead and given us a better thrill.

Favourite line

In one scene, Redford’s character dispenses a little advice to his young protégé: “When did Noah build the ark? Before the rain.” Given Redford creaky appearance, it’s fair guess he was talking from first-hand experience.

Review by: Jafo

We get no pleasure from saying this, but Iron Thunder (1998) is the worst movie we’ve ever reviewed.

The really sad part is, it’s not without promise. The film has a cool title (so cool that there’s already a movie with the same name starring Anthony ‘Amy’ Elmore) and stars Richard Hatch of Battlestar Galactica fame.

Well, let me tell you. It is all bad. Iron Thunder has nothing a viewer wants: likeable characters, an interesting story, or even just stupid fun. All copies of this cinematic abortion should be eradicated from the earth.

Richard Hatch plays a guy with a plug in his head. This allows him to plug-in to a new experimental tank, supposedly forming a perfect union of man and killing machine. Unfortunately, as anyone who’s watched a film involving testing a new super-weapon will suspect, it’s not long before Hatch’s mental screws come loose causing him to go rogue with the super-tank.

Keen for the return of their expensive hardware, the military despatch a team of soldiers to track down and stop Hatch. Will most of their number be killed before one plucky soul finds a way to circumvent the tank’s superior technology? I wouldn’t dream of spoiling it for you……

Chief among Iron Thunder’s failings is the rock-bottom budget which give proceedings an ugly, junk-like look. From the horrible CD-ROM-style graphics to the toy tanks that are laughably used as miniatures, every expense has been spared with miserly enthusiasm.

Punctuating the sub-crud action are a series of interminable, ball-achingly dull scenes where characters talk to each other to no great effect. Compounding both these problems is the films punishing runtime – a brutal, inexcusable 110 minutes. Why? What were they thinking?

Try to imagine a more stupid Digital Man (1995) crossed with the mentally challenged Bulletproof (1988). Now imagine the whole thing playing out for almost two full hours and you might have some clue as to how unbelievably bad this movie is.

Aptly, the director (or to be more accurate, perpetrator) of this movie is one Jay Woelfel. It is funny how people live up to their name for everything about this film is indeed woeful. It’s a wonder to think that he was ever allowed to unleash this atrocity on the public. How come there were no repercussions? Avoid this movie like the plague.

Still, our duty to cataloguing the world of exploding helicopter movies compels us to provide a review and detail the chopper fireball on display.

The whirlybird conflagration occurs towards the end of the film. A chopper flies with some top military honchos flies out to where Iron Thunder is trundling round.

The crazed Richard Hatch though has decamped from his tank and is now running around with a machine gun. He takes aim at the chopper hovering overhead and fires off a volley of bullets. Naturally, otherwise we wouldn’t be writing about this, the helicopter explodes

Artistic merit

In keeping with the z-grade production standards of the rest of the film, the chopper fireball is a shoddy piece of work. The footage of the actual helicopter explosion looks like it might be nicked from another film. Director Woelfel tries to liven up proceedings by having flaming wreckage cascade to the ground. Adding to the lack of believability are the unconvincing reaction shots of people on the ground.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Only known destruction of a helicopter by a man with a plug in his head.

Positives

While the film often feels like it’s never going to end, we can confirm that it does have a conclusion.

Negatives

Every minute between the opening and closing credits.

Interesting fact

People involved in the film actually managed to find work again.

This review is a guest post by our friends Brett and Ty from the great website Comeuppance Reviews. They're dedicated to celebrating action movies from the eighties VHS era. Check out their website and discover some forgotten gems.

Nothing sends an Arctic cold shudder of fear down the spine of a film fan quicker than the prospect of watching a movie spoof.

Sure, the genre has seen its share of laughter-filled classics over the decades (Airplane, Austin Powers, The Naked Gun to name but a few). But in recent years, an unending torrent of feeble efforts has thrown this once proud comedy niche into disrepute.

Ordure such as Meet The Spartans, The Starving Games and Epic Movie – not to mention the execrable Scary Movie franchise – have left traumatised witnesses mute in stony-faced horror. They’re the cinematic equivalent of Ebola – dangerous, lethal and to be avoided at all costs.

(The witless Wayans brothers have been responsible for much of this ordure. Anyone anyone brave or foolish enough to sit through a sofa marathon of their oeuvre would witness a veritable Groundhog Day of crapness – the same pratfalls, ‘Say wha’’ expressions and fart jokes on a perpetual, unfunny loop.)

So understandably, it was with bowel-twitching trepidation that Exploding Helicopter approached ‘blaxspoitation’ send-up, Black Dynamite (2009). Was this to be another grim, gag-free, misfire? More lame slapstick and crude innuendo? Dear reader, all is not lost. Black Dynamite, against all the odds, will have you exploding with laughter.

Martial arts star Michael Jai White plays the film’s eponymous hero, an ex-CIA agent turned ghetto Samaritan. Everything is good in the hood until his brother is murdered in mysterious circumstances. Vowing revenge, White begins an investigation to unmask the killer only to discover an outrageous conspiracy aimed at keeping the black man down.

Michael Jai White as Black Dynamite

So what makes this movie succeed where so many others have failed? First, this is obviously an affectionate parody. It’s clear that White – who also wrote and produced – loves the films he’s poking fun at.

This can be seen in the actor’s pitch-perfect performance, which cleverly pays tribute to the film’s inspirations even as it sends them up. White deftly combines the swaggering cool of Richard Roundtree’s Shaft and the chop-socky moves of Jim Kelly’s Black Belt Jones, while subtly satirising their super-confident, super-stud personas.

There are other nice touches. The film’s authentic feel, for example, is heightened by subtly weaving in footage from original blaxsploitation flicks. While not taken to extremes of Rob Reiner’s private eye spoof Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (where Steve Martin‘s down-at-heel shamus appeared to act alongside Humphrey Bogart) it helps create a warm, nostalgic vibe.

Black Dynamite stands in stark contrast to the recent glut of movie spoofs, little more than cynical cash-ins on popular franchises. And let’s face it: when a spoof film pointing to the shite-ness of the original is even more lame and disappointing, there’s not much to laugh about for anyone (except, of course, the shysters who made it).

And if wit, good writing and savvy acting weren’t enough, Black Dynamite also throws in a decent chopper fireball towards the end of the movie.

In order to stop the conspiracy, Black Dynamite flies a chopper to the White House for a showdown with the President. Fearing an attack on POTUS, guards from the ‘Honky House’ (as it’s amusingly called throughout) fire on the helicopter with a rocket launcher.

Our hero manages to bail out and parachute to safety, but his buddy remains at the controls as the helicopter is hit and explodes like a fourth of July firework display.

The classic 'hero illuminated by exploding helicopter shot'

Artistic merit

An aesthetically pleasing chopper fireball: this is a good, fiery explosion. Even better, the skydiving White is artfully fore-grounded against the exploding helicopter for a classic ‘hero illuminated by conflagration’ shot – a true favouriteof the action genre.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Hey, who needs innovation when you can pull off the classic genre moves so convincingly? Like Tony Bennett covering a Kajagoogoo song, this scene takes an old staple and adds a bit of class.

Do passengers survive?

Yes, Black Dynamite survives via his parachute jump. While this may seem an unlikely means of escape, Ewan McGregor performed exactly the same trick in preposterous fashion during the turgid Angels & Demons. (Fact note: while the dour priestly thriller is technically not a spoof, McGregor’s leap is by far the funnier of the two.)

Positives

The soundtrack is a crucial element of any blaxsploitation film, and Black Dynamite boasts a top-notch score courtesy of composer Adrian Younge.

Many of the soundtracks for the original Seventies films were recorded by legendary artists like Bobby Womack, Isaac Hayes, James Brown and Curtis Mayfield. Even measured against these intimidating benchmarks, Black Dynamite’s soundtrack can strut and swagger with the best of them.

Negatives

It’s not often that Exploding Helicopter fails to find at least one fault, but this is happily one of those rare occasions.

Favourite line

Nothing, aside from getting into a helicopter, is more fatal in a film than pointlessly explaining how much you love your wife and children. Sure enough, after needlessly sharing a family anecdote one of Black Dynamite’s friends is suddenly shot dead.

“Who saw that coming?” quips Black Dynamite with tongue firmly in-cheek.

Review by: Jafo

The Fifties: a time when smoking was good for you, women knew their place, and nuclear energy was glamorous and exciting.

The bold, new atomic age promised a future of unlimited energy, new medicines, and world peace. Of course, what we actually got was a Cold War, Chernobyl and bemused-looking sheep glowing away like a Ready Brek advert.

But there was at least one silver lining to the radioactive cloud: monster movies.

Hollywood, never slow to exploit the money-making potential of total global annihilation (witness pretty much the entire oeuvre of Roland Emmerich), found in radiation the perfect cinematic foil. At a stroke, atomic energy made plausible the existence of a series of terrifying, never-before-seen threats to humanity.

Just think of the excitement: movie producers were suddenly free to create monsters as outlandish and weird as their imaginations could command. (Provided, of course, said monsters could be made from rubber and have enough room inside for a stuntman to blunder around unconvincingly).

From these more enlightened times, such ideas seem patently childish. Which is probably why Dreamworks thought they’d be fertile ground for a gentle, family-friendly parody: Monsters vs Aliens (2009).

Our hero is Susan, an everyday small-town girl living a blandly anonymous life. However, her bucolic suburban existence is shattered when she’s transformed into a 49-foot-tall version of herself after being hit by a meteorite containing ‘quantonium’: the baffling-and-clearly-bollocks science element. (See also Scotty’s famed ‘dilethium crystals’ in Star Trek.)

Captured by the military, Susan is whisked off to a secret facility where other mutants are kept under lock and key. But then, wouldn’t you just know it, Earth only goes and gets itself threatened by some aliens (that other staple of Fifties sci-fi).

Susan: Attack of the '50s sci-fi cliches

Hey, it suddenly looks like Susan and her rag-tag collection of freakish friends – having been mistreated so badly – are going to have to save the day. We can only hope that those rotten suits who judged people by their appearance have learned their lesson, kids.

Given Monsters vs Aliens’ vintage inspirations there’s fun to be had in playing ‘spot the movie reference’. While 12 inches shorter, Susan is clearly a homage to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

And you don’t need the brain power of an atomic scientist to work out that ‘Bob’ - an indestructible blue gunge – is inspired by The Blob. The classic-era origins of the entertainingly waspish Dr Cockroach (The Fly) and the charmingly simple Missing Link (Creature from the Black Lagoon) are similarly easy to spot.

Enjoyable, as this good natured mimicry is, a nagging doubt gradually grows into an all-consuming question: does this film have an original idea of its own? Such doubts are thrown into sharp focus when, having exhausted the entire canon of Fifties classics, the film starts ransacking other famous sci-fi films from across the decades. Star Trek, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and E.T are all gleefully plundered as the scriptwriters desperately search for more tropes to poke fun at.

And herein lies the problem. While it has a fun premise and is beautifully animated, the film is effectively one massive in-joke. And not a particularly clever one at that. The effect is rather like watching one of those dreadful ‘Top 100’ shows, where a kaleidoscope of familiar scenes are served up devoid of context and meaning.

Still, at least Monsters vs Aliens doesn’t have Jodie Marsh and Bryan from Big Brother 2 sharing witless (and made up) anecdotes. Small mercies and all that.

Thankfully, there’s also an exploding helicopter scene to maintain our interest. This takes place early in the film. After she’s captured by the military, the newly 49 foot tall Susan is escorted to her cell by two helicopters.

As she protests her imprisonment, pleading that she poses no danger to anyone, she accidentally slaps a helicopter. With its rotor blades crumpled, the damaged chopper spins round out of control before crashing to the ground and exploding. Sorry Susan, you were saying?

Artistic merit

It’s well enough done. The helicopter explosion is really just a punchline to a joke, and not the climax of a dramatic scene, so it’s fairly perfunctory.

Exploding helicopter innovation

First known helicopter explosion in an animated movie. First helicopter to be destroyed by a petulant 49-foot-tall-woman.

Do passengers survive?

No. The camera lingers on the bloody and charred remains… Of course the pilot survives. This is an animated children’s film, for heaven’s sake: not Apocalypse Now.

Positives

Appropriately for a film about invaders from outer space, a galaxy of Hollywood stars lend their vocal talents to the film. Personal favourite was Kiefer Sutherland turn as the grizzly, gruff, and gung-ho General W.R Monger – a name guaranteed to raise a smile with weak pun enthusiasts everywhere.

Negatives

You have to wonder whether the scriptwriters, giddy with so many in-jokes, actually forgot they were writing a children’s film. It’s hard to imagine most six-year olds would have a working knowledge of Fifties B-movie sci-fi.

Pixar has built a multi-billion dollar empire from remembering to throw in a few decent jokes for the grown-ups, but here it’s definitely the kids who are the afterthought.

Favourite quote

After learning of the alien invasion of Earth, the President announces, “Boys, set the terror level to code brown ‘cause I need to change my pants.”

Interesting fact

Despite a less than impressive critical reception, the film has curiously – four years on – spawned an animated TV series charting the group’s further adventures.

Review by: Jafo

A dish is only as good as its ingredients. So when you take a generic storyline, add a non-actor as the leading man, and season with a low budget, you’re likely to end up with a plate of old tripe. Such is The Eliminator (2004).

Our star is former ultimate fighting champion Bas Rutten, who somehow decided a long career pummelling people in the face was ideal preparation for the thespian craft. But as this movie quickly shows, treading the boards requires a mite more skill and finesse than treading on someone’s windpipe.

He plays a down-on-his-luck professional powerboat racer, who’s drugged and kidnapped by an eccentric millionaire (Michael Rooker). It turns out the dastardly rich guy (aren’t they all?) wants Big Bas to take part in ‘The Eliminator’ - a deadly, kill-or-be-killed contest that pits uniquely talented desperadoes against each other.

Dumped on an escape-proof island, the contestants have to fight not only each other, but a horde of soldiers from Rooker’s private army. Still, the last man left alive will get a $10 million dollar prize. And the opportunity to continue breathing.

You’ll be forgiven for detecting a certain whiff of familiarity in the storyline, since it’s been reheated more times than a chip shop saveloy. (See The Running Man, Battle Royale and, more recently, The Hunger Games).

But at least those films threw in some cartoonish excess, savage social satire or earnest teen angst. And they had a few quid to throw around on splashy effects and diverting action scenes. The Eliminator, on the other hand, is not so much low-budget as no-budget.

Bas Rutten and Paul Logan have bromance moment

But for all that, you’ve still got to admire the gumption of the film-makers. After all, here they are, presenting a film about a powerboat racer that’s set on an island, when it appears their meagre budget didn’t stretch to filming anywhere near any real-life water.

This produces not a few comedy gold moments. Take, for example, the unmissable scene where Rutten has to build a raft to escape from the ‘island’.

Unsurprisingly, the only thing that really appears stranded here is the director. Stuck up a creek without a paddle (note: this metaphor is the closest the movie will come to actual water), he takes predictably desperate measures.

Namely, he plonks Bas on a patch of sandy-looking waste ground then dubs in the sound of invisible waves gently breaking on a shore. Honest, you can almost smell the briny.

Had a couple of stuffed seagulls suddenly dangled into shot at this point while someone made ‘caw-caw’ noises off-screen, it would have been no great surprise.

Further evidence of the film’s penury can been seen in the film’s pound shop cast. Bas Rutten may have eloquent fists, but is utterly defeated by the challenge of delivering a line of dialogue. (His reaction to being kidnapped and thrown into a death-match is to act as if he’s unexpectedly won an all-expenses paid holiday).

Even worse is muscle-bound beefcake Paul Logan (Mega Piranha), presumably one of few actors on the current scene to envy the range and versatility of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

That leaves Michael Rooker alone among the cast as the as the only capable thespian on display. A reliable supporting presence in films such as JFK and Guardians of the Galaxy, Big Mike is incapable of giving a bad performance.

The cast, most of whom are eliminated

(This is partly due to his strange strangulated voice that adds an earnest intensity to everything that he says). Ever the professional, Rooker delivers a typically committed turn that the material scarcely deserves.

And it is Rooker’s mad and murderous millionaire that helps set-up the film’s exploding helicopter scene.

Tediously, we have to wait until the end of the film for our favourite fiery delight. Rooker orders in a helicopter to hunt down Rutten. After locating their prey, a soldier tries to shoot our hero from his aerial vantage point.

Taking cover behind a tree, Rutten uses a rifle to shoot the chopper pilot in the head. While Exploding Helicopter is always ready to be surprised, we were fairly confident from this moment on that the whirlybird wasn’t going to make a safe landing.

Sure enough, the chopper spins towards the ground where it crashes, explodes and is – in the parlance of the film – eliminated.

Artistic merit

In keeping with the film’s shoddy standards, the viewer gets swizzed with the chopper fireball.

Actually blowing up a helicopter – or even something that looked like a helicopter – was clearly a budgetary impossibility. Therefore a dirty little cheat has to be employed

As the whirlybird makes its doomed descent it momentarily veers out of frame. The director then cuts hard to a generic shot of a fireball, where it’s impossible to tell what’s been blown up. Disgraceful.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Amid the cynical chicanery employed in the actual explosion, there is a little creativity for the jaded viewer. After Rutten fires his miracle shot at the pilot’s head, we cut to a point-of-view shot of the bullet making its way through the air in slow motion towards its target.

While it’s a long way from the fancy ‘bullet time’ cinematography in The Matrix, we were grateful for these crumbs of inventiveness.

Positives

There is a surprisingly decent scene early in the film. After being drugged and kidnapped, Rutten wakes to find himself in the back of a cargo airplane with the other Eliminator contestants.

Before anyone can find out what’s going on, Rutten and the rest of the competitors are hurled out of the back of the plane with parachutes.

It’s a cool idea (which is why why it's been used more effectively at the start of Predators) and heightens the disorientating confusion for the characters.

Negatives

Having gone to great pains to establish Rutten as a powerboat racer, the viewer spends a lot of the film waiting for this fact to become relevant to the plot. Even now, long after the film has finished, I’m still waiting.

It rather makes you wonder if an elaborate, postmodern joke is being played. Why else would you make a film about a powerboat champion building a raft in a dry, featureless waste?

Favourite line

Given the film’s death match premise, the inevitable “Game over!” makes a predictable but enjoyable appearance.

Review by: Jafo

Rap-fu? Kung-hop? Hip-hop chop socky? While there isn’t yet an official name for this peculiar action movie sub-genre, you’ll doubtless know the type.

Yup, we’re talking about movies such as Exit Wounds or Romeo Must Die. Films where, through barely plausible plot contrivance, a noted martial arts star is teamed with a rapper.

On the surface, these double acts appear to make little sense. But look deeper and you’ll find a cunning logic behind these oddball shotgun marriages.

Your average martial artist, while expert in unarmed combat, tends to murder dialogue as easily as an opponent. As actors, they really should let their feet and fists do the talking.

What’s needed then is a motor-mouthed sidekick. Someone whose non-stop stream of verbal diarrhoea will distract the audience from their partner’s lack of thespian chops. Less Enter The Dragon; more Yo, Bum-Rush The Rapper.

All of which makes Cradle 2 The Grave (2003) – which pairs martial arts legend Jet Li with hardcore rap king DMX – a perfect example of the form.

Trouble starts when jewel thief DMX steals a consignment of rare diamonds. Unfortunately, a ruthless arms dealer (Mark Dacascos) wants the gems too, as – wouldn’t you know it? – they’re also apparently the secret ingredient for a deadly new super weapon. You never get that at H.M Samuels.

Also on the trail of the stones is a Taiwanese cop (Jet Li) who wants to stop them falling into the wrong hands. So when Dacascos kidnaps DMX’s daughter, it’s time for the rapper and martial artist to buddy up and knuckle up.

Can our odd couple heroes rescue the imperilled tot? Have they any hope of stopping the super weapon threat? And will their fractious love-hate relationship blossom into one of grudging mutual respect? (Exploding Helicopter doesn’t like to spoil things, but if you’re after a genre convention-busting movie maybe best look elsewhere.)

The wisdom of pairing the beat-em-up star with the beat-master becomes apparent the minute Jet Li opens his mouth. His line readings are as flat as a pancake. The world may be facing global Armageddon but Li makes it sound as worrying as missing a dental appointment.

Nuff respec’, then, to DMX for livening things up with his garrulous ‘gangsta’ persona. All bling, muscle and sneers, atti-tood emanates from him like that famous glow from the old Ready Brek adverts. Dis muvver been taking care of bizness! For reals.

It’s not a subtle schtick by any stretch, but the rapper’s angry histrionics add much-needed pep to proceedings.

Even still, it seems the producers were in no mood to take any chances. And as the ancient Chinese proverb (possibly) has it: why have one sassy loudmouth when you can have half a dozen?

Perhaps familiar with the rest of Li’s Hollywood output (the diminutive actor’s charm and quirky energy seem to evaporate in English-language movies), the movie-makers have stuffed the cast with more fast-talking wise-asses than you could twerk your money-maker at.

As DMX’s gang members, Anthony Anderson and Gabrielle Union add bountiful levels of live-wire sass. And just in case there was still a danger of insufficient jibber-jabber, Tom Arnold turns up as a loquacious ‘Mr Fix-it’. (This, naturally, is a thinly veiled reprise of the irritating gob-on-legs act he’s been doing on-and-off since trademarking it in True Lies.)

At times, there’s so much shouting, in-your-face posturing and pushing on show, you half-expect Jerry Springer to spring up and calm everyone down, before delivering a ‘heartfelt’ moral message to the screen.

Unsurprisingly, amid such verbal overkill, wee, silent Jet runs the risk of becoming an anonymous presence altogether. After all, the only things he has that can talk are his fists. Happily, the producers – realising that no-one wants the star to become lost in his own film – throw in loads of improbably-conceived dust-ups.

Perhaps the finest example, in a film filled to bursting with unlikely confrontations, is a spurious cage-fighting contest, which is entertainingly (and entirely unconvincingly) crowbarred into the plot.

A similarly over-the-top approach is taken towards the rest of the film’s action sequences. A quad bike chase through the streets (and eventually across the rooftops) of Los Angeles is an exciting example of this extravagance. So too is the finale where we treated to not one, but two exploding helicopters.

Events move to a small airport (always a favourite location for an action movie showdown). With his nefarious plans scuppered, Dacascos attempts to make an escape in a chopper. Fortunately, Tom Arnold has also turned up in a tank. (Don’t ask: it’s just that kind of film).

With Dacascos about to disappear into the skies, Arnold fires the tank cannon. The shell hits the chopper’s tail rotor which, in the time-honoured tradition of the exploding helicopter genre, causes the whirlybird to spin round wildly before crashing into the ground and exploding.

But wait. In keeping with the film’s bling-bling approach to excess, the first explosion of Dacascos’s chopper causes another nearby helicopter to blow-up. Cradle 2 The Grave? We call it Chopper To The Grave.

Artistic merit

The first helicopter is a bit of a swizz. Despite causing a sizeable fiery eruption when it crashes, the chopper remains curiously intact. Well, not that curiously, as Dacascos has yet to have his chop-socky showdown with Jet Li, so needs to be able to crawl out of the wreckage.

But with no major characters on-board, the second helicopter explodes with such force that the entire chassis is thrust into the sky before falling back to earth. We’re given plenty of time to savour the moment as the sequence is loving played out in slow motion and repeated several times for our delectation.

Exploding helicopter innovation

While not unique, this is an extremely rare example of a tank being used to destroy a helicopter.

Rambo III (1988) includes the earliest example we’ve seen, where the crazed General Zayan pilots one into a tank driven by Sylvester Stallone in one of the most gloriously over-the-top games of chicken ever put on the big screen.

Other examples can be seen in the film Courage Under Fire (1996) and XXX2: The Next Level.

Do passengers survive?

As already mentioned, Mark Dacascos crawls out of the wreckage though goodness knows how. Perhaps the villainous leather suit that he wears throughout has fire retardant qualities.

Positives

Cradle 2 The Grave has a ripe ridiculousness that makes it hard to resist. Logic and reality play no part in this film. Things happen for the sole reason that the audience may be entertained by them. And you know what? That's no bad thing.

Negatives

Martial arts fans presumably spent the whole film waiting for the showdown between Jet Li and Mark Dacascos. But when their fight finally comes we can’t enjoy it, as the scene is choppily filmed and the action keeps cutting to battles other characters are engaged in. Such shoddy editing ruins the flow of the duel and what should have been a highlight ends up as a damp squib.

Favourite line

Someone enquires of Jet Li: “What are you? Some kind of kung-fu James Bond?”

Interesting fact

Mark Dacascos was chosen as the villain for this film following a poll on Jet Li’s personal website asking which martial arts star his fans would most like to see him fight.

Review by: Jafo

Watching exploitation flicks can be a joyless affair. By their nature, they tend to be low on budget, originality – and most depressingly, entertainment.

Possibly, the only thing worse than sitting through such hackneyed drivel is writing a review of it for a niche film blog dedicated to an invented micro-genre. (Note: that’s this one, in case you thought Exploding Helicopter was suggesting you click off to somewhere more interesting).

But occasionally, just occasionally, you encounter an exploitation film that remembers the genre is actually meant to be fun. Sometimes, a movie plants its tongue so firmly in cheek, and delivers its genre tropes with such breezy wit, that you leave feeling as if you haven’t been, well, exploited. Friends: I give you Piranhaconda (2012).

The plot

After stealing a nest full of piranhaconda eggs, an Indiana Jones-style scientist-adventurer (Michael Madsen, continuing his downward career spiral with admirable alacrity) is captured by a mysterious gang of criminals.

Big Mike is quickly joined in captivity by a bunch of actors from a nearby films shoot (note: this film is taking place in a curiously populated area of ‘remote’ jungle).

But before the villains can start cutting out old newspaper letters into a ransom demand, the piranhacondas go on a slithery, teeth-gnashing rampage to get their unhatched younglings back. Can our heroes escape the kidnappers’ clutches? Will they evade the murderous reptilian fish? And could someone please explain what the hell a piranhaconda is?

Who the hell’s in this?

In a staggeringly unlikely piece of casting, Michael Madsen plays a professor of herpetology (the study of reptiles and amphibians in case you’re wondering). If that idea isn’t mind-melting enough, his character is called Professor Lovegrove. Hmmm shabba. Slouching through the film with his usual smirking sang-froid, the ear slicing Reservoir Dogs star seems as amused as the audience by his bizarre casting.

Michael Madsen: natural casting as a reptile professor

The only other cast member of note is Rachel Hunter who crops up as a henchwoman in the kidnappers’ gang. The former Mrs Rod Stewart (an unhelpful label given how many identical-looking leggy blondes this tag now applies to) doesn’t appear too interested in the film.

Her limp contribution is mercifully ended early, when she’s mounted by a slithery aberration with a gaping mouth and leathery skin. Probably reminded her of her wedding night.

Why on earth should I watch?

The film-within-a-film subplot provides a surprisingly rich source of gags for the viewer to enjoy. With fully intentional irony, the crew in the jungle are shooting a low-budget slasher called Head Chopper 3. Cue loads of knowing jokes about horror genre conventions and bad acting, which are as much a commentary on the film we’re watching as they one they’re pretending to make.

Admittedly, this sort of meta-critique is hardly new, and has been done better elsewhere: the Scream films, for example. But God – and Exploding Helicopter – loves a trier, and the movie’s game efforts to please are goodwill in the bank.

Why would this be best avoided?

The presence of a decent baddie can be the making of a movie. (See Alan Rickman in Die Hard and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.) By the same token, a clunkingly bad one can sink a movie like a stone. (Hello there, Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr Freeze in Batman and Robin.)

Piranhaconda positively cries out for a bit of moustache-twizzling, panto-villain cruelty from the kidnap gang’s leader. Unfortunately, jobbing actor Michael Swan exudes all the menace of a pedantic parking warden. When you’re being out-menaced by a former supermodel who’s supposed to be in your own gang, it’s probably time to jack in the acting lark.

A piranhaconda snacks on a helicopter

Exploding helicopter action

The key scenes occur at the start of the film shortly after Madsen steals the piranhaconda eggs. He plans to make his getaway in a chopper that’s hovering nearby, but the enraged snake has other, largely homicidal, ideas.

Before Madsen can hop onboard, the piranhaconda rears up and bites the unfortunate vehicle. The pilot loses control, and the damaged chopper spins towards the ground and explodes.

Artistic merit

Good: there’s a decent fireball. Even better, the rotor blades sheer off and hurtle towards the camera adding a touch of extra drama.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Helicopters don’t tend to be bitten very often in films (they’re clearly not very appetising), but there have been other examples – in Godzilla (1997) and Robocroc (2013).

Favourite line

Many films get bogged down with expositionitis – the compulsive need to explain everything to the viewer. Invariably, this involves turgid exchanges between two characters as they expound lengthily on the plot.

There was much reason to fear that Piranhaconda, with its need to explain away its unlikely-sounding titular creature, would fall foul of this trap. Not so. The film deals with the whole matter in three commendably brief sentences.

“It’s like an unholy union between a piranha and an anaconda.”
“You mean a piranhaconda.”
“I can’t believe you just said that.”

Review by: Jafo

‘Crack.’ ‘Splatter.’ ‘Shriek!’ ‘Splurge.’

Lone Survivor (2013) is one of the most brutal, blood-splattered war movies ever committed to celluloid. During the course of this gruelling film, hundreds of people are brutally shot, stabbed and bludgeoned to death in graphic, documentary detail. And yet, by the end of a juddering 121 minutes, perhaps the greatest casualty is any sense of realistic characterisation.

The plot

Based on real events, the film tells the story of a bungled operation to kill a high-level Taliban leader in Afghanistan. A small reconnaissance team is sent to discretely locate the target. But after being discovered, they quickly find themselves surrounded by the local militia.

Unable to summon help, the soldiers are forced into a desperate battle to both save their lives and come across as three-dimensional characters. (Given this is a Peter Berg film, it’s probably not giving too much away to say that the odds for either of these aren’t too promising.)

Who the hell’s in this?

Funky bunch rapper, hamburger entrepreneur and occasional actor Mark Wahlberg plays Marcus Luttrell – the titular character. Naturally, everyone else in the cast is expendable cannon fodder. (The clue’s kind of in the title.)

Making up the rest of Wahlberg’s condemned team are Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch and Taylor Kitsch– an actor whose vacant, surfer dude persona and wooden acting are reminiscent of a younger, slightly less convincing, Keanu Reeves. When they’re hiding out in a forest at one point, it’s actually hard to spot Kitsch among all those other prime hunks of timber.

Further target practice for the Taliban is provided by perennial movie corpse, Eric Bana. Having met a sticky-end in Star Trek, Troy, The Time Traveller’s Wife, and Hanna, Eric’s not really the guy you’d want to see leading your rescue mission.

And sure enough, as soon as everyone’s least favourite Hulk tries to save Wahlberg, he gets an RPG straight up his jacksy. Only Sean Bean has a ‘death reel’ to rival the Aussie lunk.

The good

While Berg has little interest in narrative niceties such as plot and character development, he is at least keen to depict war in all its visceral hell. This lack of squeamishness results in some of most intense combat scenes Exploding Helicopter has ever encountered – filled with pulse-pounding tension, fear, and confusion.

Mark Wahlberg and his doomed co-stars

There’s an almost giddy portrayal of realistic, close-quarters violence. Forget those films where characters heroically dismiss injuries as ‘flesh wounds’ before bounding-off to perform Herculean feats of bravery. Here, war really hurts.

Outnumbered and outgunned, our heroes are not so much injured as gradually mutilated by the punishing array of guns, rockets and grenades ranged against them. Bones break, limbs are shot-off, and blood pumps furiously from gaping wounds. An episode of Casualty, this is not.

The most powerful scene in the film sees the surviving soldiers try to escape their pursuers by throwing themselves down a steep cliff. As they hurtle uncontrollably down the slope, the sound and camerawork makes you feel like you’re experiencing every impact as they smash into trees, rocks and boulders. By the time they get to the bottom, it feels like you’ve careened down the cliff yourself.

The bad

While Peter Berg’s sledgehammer approach to film-making brings vitality to the combat scenes, it poses big problems whenever the actors have to do some of that old-fashioned ‘acting’ stuff that used to be so popular.

The film has barely begun before our heroes, in a series of entirely unnatural conversations, unload a heavy barrage of character exposition. They shell the viewer with unnecessary stories about how much they love their families, and engage in much strained bros-in-arms joshing.

It’s all utterly unconvincing: the scenes are simply there to establish each character as action movie stereotype A, B or C. So by the time Taylor Kitsch starts yakking away about his upcoming marriage, he may as well hold up a sign saying: ‘Dead by the end of the second act’.

(It’s a well-known staple of these movies that no character ever mentions impending nuptials, or even looks fondly on a pic of a ‘special gal back home’, without getting solidly murdered to death within the hour.)

Eric Bana: world's worst rescue team leader

Notably absent from all this emotional elucidation is Mark Wahlberg. As anyone familiar with war films knows: the man with the least to live for is the guy who gets to go home. So when the Wahlburger tells us that all he wants to do on getting back to the States is chop down the tree in his garden we can be sure he’ll make it to the end credits.

(And in fairness, standing next to a big lump of wood will probably remind him of all those good times with Taylor Kitsch.)

Such character problems were readily apparent in Berg’s previous film Battleship, a movie exclusively populated by cardboard cut-outs – including a mono-featured Rhianna, who has arguably shown more expressionistic range in those innumerable tweeted photos of her own arse.

So flimsy was the characterisation that the actors wore t-shirts with ‘Navy’ and ‘Army’, as if that was the most interesting thing about them. Often, it was.

The unwatchable

Fatally, Lone Survivor includes a credit that has marked the death knell for many a movie: ‘Made with the full cooperation of the US Army’. Inevitably, this translates into unending scenes of flag-waving, tub-thumping jingoism.

The film’s opening is little more than a glorified recruitment video for the US armed forces where soldiers are lectured on the values that make them men: honour, loyalty and comradeship. Hu-ah!

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the whole thing is rounded off with a lachrymose cover version of David Bowie’s Heroes. At some points, the whole thing veers dangerously close to Team America’s ‘Fuck, yeah!’ territory. Hail to the chief, indeed. Now, will someone pass the sick bag?

The chinnock gets an RPG up the jacksy

Exploding helicopter action

So, to our favourite casualty of war. This occurs when a big Chinnock helicopter is scrambled for a rescue mission. There’s a strong hint that the big whirlybird could be doomed as soon as we see the ill-omened Eric Bana climb on-board. (Possibly only Dracula has spent more time dead onscreen than the accident-prone Antipodean.)

It flies out to the mountain where Wahlberg and his team are trapped by the Taliban. But before reinforcements can be dropped off, one of the Afghans fires an RPG.

The missile flies straight inside the back of the whirlybird via the open loading ramp. Soldiers dodge out of the way as the rocket flies down the centre of cargo hold.

Hitting the cockpit, it ka-booms and completely severs the front half of the chopper. The dismembered helicopter falls to the ground and explodes. Ho, hum. Eric Bana killed in action once again.

Artistic merit

Whatever gripes viewers may have against Peter Berg, the lad knows how to stage an action sequence. This is a high quality, well-executed chopper fireball.

Exploding helicopter innovation

I loved how the missile flew down the inside of the Chinnock - an innovation we’ve never seen before.

Surprisingly, despite expiring so many times onscreen, this is the first time Eric Bana has been killed by an exploding helicopter. One suspects – and hopes – it won’t be the last.

Interesting fact

This indeed is a small world. Marcus Luttrell - on whose story this film is based - was friends with Chris ‘American Sniper’ Kyle, having served in the Navy Seals together.

Review by: Jafo

Black Sunday (1977) should be a disaster. This spy thriller has a plot so epically bonkers, it would make a Bond movie look like an espionage documentary.

Yet, in the hands of directorial master John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, Ronin), the fantastical storyline is transformed into the basis for a genuinely gripping, pulse-quickening actioner.

The plot

So what’s so barmy about the plot? Well the basic premise is standard fare: Arab terrorists plot to attack America. (Twas ever thus).

What is unconventional is their crackpot plan. This involves blowing up the Superbowl game using an airship they’ve turned into a giant floating bomb.

Only a top Israeli secret agent can stop the deadly attack. Can he burst the terrorists’ balloon? Or will it be a ‘good year’ (Goodyear, geddit?) for the villains?

Who the hell’s in this?

Robert Shaw (From Russia With Love) is the film’s hero. He’s plays Major Kabakov, a world-weary Mossad spy whose steely belief in his own superiority is matched only by his disdain for everyone around him.

In many ways, he’s a secret agent version of Quint, the salty seadog he so famously played in Jaws. All that’s missing is a scene where he shows off his scars while pretending – very unconvincingly – to be drunk.

He’s pitted against Bruce Dern, an unhinged Vietnam veteran recruited by the terrorists to fly the blimp. Dern, a long-serving specialist in crazed loon characters (see Silent Runnings, The Cowboys, et al), is here given free rein to unleash his inner crazy.

In one chilling scene, he cold-bloodedly engineers a man’s death just so he can test a nail-bomb. As the bloody, mutilated body slumps in front of him, Dern’s only interest is the symmetry of the holes on the wall behind the corpse. Yup, it’s fair to say the lad’s tuppence short of a shilling.

The good

Despite clocking in at the best part of two and a half hours, Black Sunday is never less than gripping.

The extended runtime gives Frankenheimer the scope to not only stage several exciting action set pieces (a bloody hotel shoot-out and motorboat chase are highlights) but properly develop the characters of his two protagonists.

While most espionage thrillers opt for either psychological depth (The Spy Who Came In From The Cold) or pyrotechnic thrills (The Spy Who Loved Me), Frankenheimer deftly fuses the two approaches.

This pays dividends for Frankenheimer during the credulity-stretching climax. As the blimp slowly, and very visibly, chugs towards its target (whatever it may be, this is certainly not a stealth operation), Robert Shaw is lowered from a pursuing helicopter in a desperate bid to stop the airship.

Predictably, things don’t go exactly to plan and our Bob is left clinging on to the side of blimp, looking for all the world like a midget trying to hump a very, very big woman. All the while, he frantically tries to attach a hook so the behemoth can be towed to safety by the chopper.

By rights this sequence should be every bit as a ridiculous as the ‘jump-the-shark’ moment in Die Hard 4.0 when Bruce Willis hitches a ride on a fighter jet. But with the viewer already fully invested in the characters and their motivations, the scene feels more like a natural conclusion rather than an absurdity bolted on to the end. (Which, in truth, it probably is.)

The bad

This is a big budget Hollywood blockbuster, where good must eventually triumph. That means the terrorists are required to make a simple mistake that ultimately leads to their downfall. And what an avoidable cock-up it is.

Despite the attack being weeks away, one of the terrorists can’t resist recording the gloating message they plan to send the media claiming responsibility for the atrocity. Let’s just hope this damning tape doesn’t accidentally fall into hands of the Americans, giving them just enough information to track down the terrorists. Oh, wait… D’oh.

The unwatchable

Not so much unwatchable, as inaudible. Robert Shaw’s attempt at a kosher Israeli accent is so bizarre, Exploding Helicopter was forced turn the subtitles on after 20 minutes. Oy vey!

Exploding helicopter action

Since the dramatic focus of Black Sunday is an exploding zeppelin, the film may seem an unpromising prospect for chopper fireball fans. Fear not! For during the film’s exciting denouement, there is also some exploding rotary action to enjoy.

As the airship languidly floats towards the Superbowl, a police helicopter is scrambled to stop it. Happily, one of the terrorists has brought along a machine-gun and energetically opens fire on the copper’s chopper.

Trailing smoke and flames, the wounded whirlybird loses altitude before it suddenly explodes. It goes up, ironically enough, like the Hindenburg.

Artistic merit

Points have to be deducted for cheating. Rather than actually blow up the helicopter, footage of a fireball is superimposed over it. Due to the limitations of special effects in the Seventies, this trick was regularly – and unconvincingly – employed by filmmakers of the era (Diamonds Are Forever, for example.)

Watching today, it’s easy to sit and smirk. But Exploding Helicopter choses to salute these trailblazers who found ways to give us the chopper fireball thrills we craved despite the technical challenges of their day.

Exploding helicopter innovation

This blog has seen helicopters battle many different modes of transport: motorcycles, cars, airplanes, tanks, even trains. But, we’ve never seen one engaged in an aerial dogfight with a blimp. It remains unique to this day.

Favourite line

Understanding what makes a success or failure can be hard.

In Predator, Arnold Schwarzenegger immortalised the line: “Get to the chopper!” Sadly, Bruce Dern was unable to pull off the feat with his similar, but perhaps less catchy, “Get to the blimp!”

Maybe he should have tried it with a thick Austrian accent.

Tagline

Black Sunday’s tagline is the perplexing ‘It could be tomorrow’. And indeed it might, assuming every day was Saturday.

Review by: Jafo

Has there ever been a more unlikeable actor than Chuck Norris?

Taciturn, charmless, and with a cigarette paper-wide emotional range, Chuck somehow managed to maintain a 30-year career as a Hollywood star. All while looking like a lion forcibly mated with a squat female bodybuilder.

Despite such barriers to success, audiences flocked to his films. And sadly for Exploding Helicopter, he’s the charisma vacuum at the heart of Delta Force 2 (1990).

A sequel to the jingoistic, patriotic tub thumper The Delta Force, Norris returns as Colonel Scott McCoy the taciturn, charmless Special Forces commander with an emotional range as wide as a…….. oh, you can guess the rest.

The plot

America is flooded with cocaine, so Chuckie Boy is given a secret mission to capture drug baron Ramon Cota (Billy Drago), who’s holed up in the fictional South American country of San Carlos. The assignment has extra piquancy for Norris as Cota brutally killed his friend.

Now, those with more inquisitive minds may be wondering where, given the title, Colombia fits into all this. All I can say is, don’t trouble yourself with trifling details like that. Certainly, no-one involved in making this film did.

Who the hell’s in this?

As we’re already mentioned, our star is Carlos Norris (as he doesn’t like to be known). Never the most demonstrative of actors, Chuck is in particularly inexpressive form here.

During the film our hero has to watch a video of his best friend being murdered in cold blood by the evil Cota. So, how does Chuck react to this horrifying moment? Does his tormented face portray the frustration and helplessness his character must feel as he witnesses his buddy slowly expire?

In a word: no.

Instead, Chuck stares blankly at the TV screen looking for all the world like a man waiting for the Ceefax page to change. And the Norris-nator’s leaden performance is not helped by the wildly divergent acting chops on display elsewhere.

As drug-lord Ramon Cota, Billy Drago gives a film-stealing turn of pantomime villainy. Listlessly lolling around his hideout, drawling his dialogue with theatrical relish he comes across like a homicidal lizard.

But Drago is made to look a modicum of restraint in comparison to B-movie stalwart John P Ryan, who plays Norris’ boss General Taylor. Twisting the over-acting dial to eleven, Ryan’s wildly eccentric turn appears to have no relevance to the film, the dialogue or even the part. He may be one of the good guys, but he’s potentially more nuts than anyone Norris is looking to bring to justice.

Chuck working through his emotional issues

The good

In case you thought Chuck was completely unmoved by the sight of his friend being sadistically killed, we do get a scene where he works through his grief and inner pain.

In an effort to find exorcise his demons and find emotional peace, old Weirdy-Beardy beats up his entire Delta Force squad in an extended training montage.

As he surveys the battered and broken bodies of the entire troop scattered across the ground, Chuck’s boss asks: “Feeling better?”

“Yes,” he replies. “But they’re not.”

What a nice guy.

The bad

Many a bad actor (John Wayne, Arnold Schwarzenegger, et al) has been saved by a director savvy enough to accentuate their stars strengths while hiding their flaws. Unfortunately, John Ford and James Cameron were unavailable to direct Delta Force 2, so instead the film is left in the dead hand of Aaron Norris.

After 15 profitable years working as his brothers’ stunt double, Aaron was – in a shameless act of nepotism – elevated to the role of director. While Norris Jr. may know how to fall from the top of a building or jump through a window whilst on fire, it’s clear he hasn’t a Scooby about how to direct or edit a film.

Straightforward scenes take on peculiar, unintended tones, as the camera inexplicably lingers on actors after they’ve delivered their lines. All the awkward pauses and silences make you wonder if the brothers Norris were trying for a Pinteresque deconstruction of the human condition. Although it remains entirely more likely that they simply didn’t know what they were doing.

The unwatchable

Worse is Norris minor’s obsession with slow motion. Chuck doesn’t delivers a single punch or kick in this film without the frame being slowed to a crawl. Exploding Helicopter found hitting fast-forward the easiest way of restoring the fights to a normal speed.

Exploding helicopter action

We have to wait until the end of the film before we’re treated to our favourite form of fiery aviation delight.

As Chuck attempts to make his getaway from Cota’s compound he’s pursued by a helicopter piloted by General Olmedo, a corrupt army officer who’s in cahoots with Cota.

Chuck Norris with the 'mad as a ship's cat' John P Ryan

When the car Chuck’s driving is crippled by rocket fire from the chopper, it looks like the game is up. With Chuck in the centre of his crosshairs, Olmedo – in typical villainous fashion - chooses to savour the moment and fatally pauses before administering the kill (a plot devices taken to a high art by the Bond films).

The delay allows Chuck’s buddy General Taylor, piloting a helicopter of his own, to sneak up behind Olmedo and blast his opponent out the sky with a rocket. Having done the hard work the bonkers General gets to deliver the kiss-off line: “Bye-bye asshole.”

Artistic merit

Surprisingly, it’s pretty darn good. A lustrous, large fireball fills the screen. And while the scene is simply constructed and a tad predictable it’s still thoroughly enjoyable.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Innovation is not a concept that’s ever been knowingly embraced in a Chuck Norris film.

Positives

In recent years, Chuck Norris has become the subject of a famous internet meme. You know, that seemingly unending list of statements that attest to Chuck Norris’ incredible powers. Lines like “Chuck Norris doesn’t do push-ups. He pushes the Earth down.”

Interestingly, we can perhaps trace the origins of this phenomena to this film. Where after beating up a group of thugs in a bar, Norris is told off by a friend for breaking his promise not to get into a fight.
Norris replies, “I didn’t fight. I gave a motivational seminar.”

Negatives

It’s well known that the laws of physics do not apply in films. And Exploding Helicopter has always been fascinated by the objects which take on curiously bullet proof properties in movies.

Roger Moore’s discovery of bullet proof snow at the beginning of A View To A Kill has always been our favourite, but Delta Force 2 runs it a close second by featuring munitions resistant straw. Amazing.

Interesting fact

With a wooden leading man, a turgid script and the star’s stunt man brother directing, it’s not like this film didn’t have enough issues. But apparently Michael Winner was at one point set to make this film. Yee Gods.

Favourite line

We love the meaningless bollocks that’s regularly spouted in action films to give the dialogue a quasi-military feel. There’s a particularly fine example of the art here: “Eagle one, this is wildcard. Stranglehold is a go.”

Review by: Jafo

Depending on your view of the comedic merits of Seth Rogen, the pulling of The Interview’s (2014) release last year could be the most humane act ever connected with the North Korean regime.

As we all know, the film was famously canned after mysterious computer geeks hacked Sony’s computers and threatened attacks against any cinemas showing the film.

In response, liberals the world over suddenly became fully fledged Seth Rogen fans (at least until the moment they actually saw the movie) and supplied Sony with more free publicity than they could have ever possibly imagined.

The plot

A celebrity chat show host and his loyal producer manage to land an interview with North Korean leader Kim Jung-Un, after discovering he’s a massive fan of the show. This piques the interest of the CIA who recruit the pair to use the interview as cover for a covert assassination attempt.

Who the hell is in this? Seth Rogen plays Aaron Rapaport, producer of the Skylark show which is fronted by Dave Skylark (James Franco). Rogen and Franco have appeared in a whole host of films together.

When they first teamed-up it seemed that Franco was giving a leg up to the more junior Rogen, but now the roles seem to have reversed with the comedian helping to give his homeboy a pay check.

The good

Whether you ultimately like this or not will really depend on your taste for Seth Rogen, but Eminem’s cameo role as a guest coming out on the Skylark show was a high point. For the rest of the movie Rogen plays his usual loveable bear character who eventually triumphs and gets the girl.

While many can’t stand Seth Rogen films – his mere involvement proving a turn off - he has expanded his repertoire somewhat (admittedly not in this film) and is very likeable. Although Franco’s turn is a major downside to the film his bonding with Kim Jung-Un over father issues, a mutual love of margheritas and Katy Perry is very well done.

The bad

Rogen goes for some easy ‘me so sorry’ laughs early on that really let the film down and do nothing to combat accusations of racism. There’s also an unnecessary section set in China after Rogen’s character is summoned to meet with Kim Jung-un’s representatives to discuss a possible interview.

The only conceivable reason for its inclusion is that Rogen (who is always in charge of a Rogen film) wanted to see China, because the punchline the gag builds to is really not worth it. There’s also some weirdly over the top blood splattered goriness that comes from nowhere.

The unwatchable

Two words. James Franco.

I get that he is playing an over the top celebrity chat show host but Franco’s performance contains more ham than a high street butcher’s shop. The gurning and extreme facial expressions are bad enough but what seems to be ad-libbing (and I really hope it can be put down to ad-libbing) shows the paucity of Franco’s comedic chops.

Seth Rogen could have been kinder to his mate and employed a harsher editor – or just made sure he stuck to the script.

Exploding helicopter action

After the initial plan to kill Kim Jung-un with a slow releasing poison goes tits up, the good guys eventually assassinate the supreme leader by firing a rocket from a tank into a helicopter. Seconds away from setting off a nuclear attack, the grinning Kim Jung-un’s face turns to horror as he realises his impending doom.

Artistic merit

As the missile is fired we see the attack in slow motion to a soundtrack of Katy Perry’s ‘Firework’ (I obviously wasn’t aware of this song before watching this movie). After an explosion that turns the North Korean leader into a human fireball we see the chopper fall from the sky behind the heroes’ tank. And then there’s some more awesome explosions.

Favourite line

Again it depends on whether you go for Seth Rogen’s brand of humour – and I generally do – but the gallery of the Skylark Show shouting “Eminem is gay on our show” worked for me. As did the “McConaughey goat fuck!” shout after hearing of another celeb story.

Those of a slightly more cerebral nature might enjoy the “How many times must the USA make the same mistakes? – As many as it takes” exchange.

Tagline

‘Their Trip to North Korea Just Went South’ is pretty ho-hum but the alternative ‘From the Western Capitalist Pigs Who Brought You Bad Neighbours and This is the End’ is a nice touch.

Review by: Dan Roberts (@lasvegasWI) you can find more of Dan Roberts ramblings at DanRobertsRambling.

“Ninjas, thousands of ‘em.” As Michael Caine might have observed had he ever visited a video shop.

That’s because during the eighties VHS boom, video store shelves groaned under the accumulated weight of films with titles like Ninja Dragon, Ninja Terminator and Ninja Hunt. Or Bionic Ninja, Clash of Ninja, Rage of Ninja…..you get the point.

Suffice to say, filmmakers imaginations were limited only by the number of verbs and adjectives that could be sensibly (and in many cases, not so sensibly) bolted to the magical ‘n’ word.

Sniffing the opportunity to make a quick buck, those masters of action exploitation the Cannon Group came up with a cunning plan. Why not give the oriental, black-clad, stealth assassin formula a stars ‘n’ stripes makeover? And so the American Ninja (1985) was born.

The plot

Michael Dudikoff, a star of the VHS action era, plays an army private with a mysterious past. (In fact it’s a mystery even to him as a bout of amnesia means he can remember nothing of his childhood).
After arriving at his new posting, Dudikoff quickly finds himself entangled with illegal arms dealers and his commanding officer’s comely daughter (Judie Aronson).

Can Dudikoff stop the baddies? Will he get the girl? Or, in an unexpected break with convention, will our hero be romantically rejected moments after the villains happily complete their dastardly scheme? (Sadly, this is not that film, but we long to see it).

Please explain the ludicrous overly complicated sub-plot?

Exploding Helicopter loves films which give their heroes’ byzantine backstories which, in a torturous twist of fate, prove surprisingly relevant to present day proceedings.

Michael Dudikoff

And so it is here, when we learn that Dudikoff, in a hilarious scene of clunking exposition, was raised on a remote Pacific Island under the care of a Japanese soldier who was unaware World War II had ended.

Such outlandish history would normally take some explaining. Fortunately the amnesia gimmick spares the scriptwriters from having to provide an explanation for these extraordinary circumstances (though frankly I’d love to have heard it) or how Dudikoff came to be supernaturally skillful at martial arts.

This colourful biography appears entirely irrelevant, until we meet a wily old Japanese gardener who seems just a little too interested in our hero. Oh yes, it’s man who raised Dudikoff all those years ago. And if that wasn’t preposterous enough, the oriental horticulturalist is working for the villainous Mr Big’s Dudikoff’s trying to stop.

Honestly, what were the odds? (Seriously, what were the odds? Because I’d like to stick a fiver on it and retire a rich man.)

Just how nuts is this film?

Well, let’s take this film’s villain. He’s an illegal arms dealer who - rather than lead a low key, incognito sort of life, away from the scrutiny of law enforcement - lives on a giant estate with a private army of highly trained ninja. Ludicrous this may be, but it does provide plenty of karate, pyjama-wearing butt for Dudikoff to kick.

Ordinarily, for a chop-socky action flick where your hero is a ninja warrior who has to battle an army of similarly skilled opponents, you’re leading man would be an actor with a solid knowledge of martial arts. But ordinary is not a word you’d ever associate with this film.

Bizarrely, Michael Dudikoff was cast despite having no knowledge of ninjutsu, karate, or aikido (although I understand he’s a black belt in origami). It should have been a disaster. Incredibly, it works.

Is American Ninja worth watching?

It may be goofy, it may not make sense, but if you’re looking to relax, crack open a beer, and be entertained for ninety minutes then you really can’t go wrong.

In many ways, American Ninja is a microcosm of everything that was good about eighties action films. It creates a world where anything can happen, populates it with larger than life characters and gives them an easily understandable mission to complete. It’s a formula so simple you wonder how filmmakers today make such a mess of so many films.

Exploding helicopter action

Chopper fireball fans have to be patient as our favourite fiery delight doesn’t take place until the film’s denouement.

Dudikoff enjoying a helicopter ride

With Dudikoff and his army buddies closing in, the villain tries to make a getaway by grabbing Dudikoff’s girlfriend hostage and escaping in a helicopter.

As the chopper lifts into the skies, our Mike grabs on to the landing skis of the whirlybird. Clambering up the outside of the craft, he swaps a few blows with the nasty desperado.

After freeing his squeeze, the ‘Dude’ leaps from the aircraft onto the roof of building over which it is conveniently hovering.

Back on the ground, a solider has whipped out a rocket launcher which he fires at the helicopter. I hope you’ve been reading this website long enough to know what happens next. (Hint: the helicopter explodes).

Artistic merit

What’s not to enjoy? The fireball’s nice and juicy and we get to watch the wreckage crash to the ground in time honoured fashion. Yes, the helicopter’s is clearly a model, but in fairness it’s pretty convincing. Overall, it’s a winner.

Exploding helicopter innovation

None to report. Method and style of destruction have all been done many times before.

Do passengers survive?

As already mentioned, Dudikoff and Aronson survive. Leaping from an exploding helicopter is a fairly common occurrence and there’s certainly some fun to be had with it.

Angels & Demons, which featured Ewan McGregor (playing the Pope no less) unexpectedly parachuting to safety after safely disposing of a nuclear bomb, remains the high watermark.

Sadly, this one is rather lame, with our heroes only having to jump about six feet from a helicopter with no good reason to still be hovering so low.

Favourite line

Exploding Helicopter always enjoys filmmakers attempts to disguise exposition as a clumsy piece of dialogue. And there’s a wee gem to enjoy here.
“Have you ever heard of ninjutsu sir?”
“What's that?”
“The secret art of assassination.”
“Yeah of course I have!”

Interesting fact

Chuck Norris was originally cast in the lead role, but declined at the prospect of having to obscure his face by wearing a ninja outfit. “If I'm going to be in a film,” he loftily declared. “I don't want my face hidden.”

Given that Chuck has spent the majority of his career hiding his face behind a straggly pubic wig, some readers might find such a position of principle odd.

Review by: Jafo

Nothing says summer’s here like the arrival of an end-of-days’ apocalyptic blockbuster in your local multiplex.

Last year, we had not one, but two disaster epics threatening humanity - especially those unfortunate enough to have actually watched those sorry spectacles. (Super-tornado CGI-fest Into The Storm blew in-and-out of cinemas leaving only the wreckage of several careers in its wake, and volcano period piece Pompeii famously failed to erupt at the box office.)

So, given recent form, San Andreas– Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s 3D earthquake extravaganza – looked a decidedly *ahem* shakey prospect. Happily, dear reader, the film bucks the recent trend for disastrous disaster movies.

Gripping from the outset, director Brad Peyton pulls no punches in his quest to satisfy your thirst for action. The opening scene features Ray (Dwayne Johnson) rescuing a damsel in distress from a car dangling over a cliff edge, and the drama doesn’t stop until the final credits roll.

Cynics will be initially fooled into thinking there is a superficial narrative running alongside the disaster quake storyline, when they discover Ray (soon to be a divorcee) is struggling to come to terms with his wife and teenage daughter moving in with their new partner.

But that’s only because there’s an even more superficial parallel narrative.

Oh yes! Ray is also tortured by the death, some years earlier, of his other daughter. Obviously, we don’t want to spoil things for you, so let me assure you that this backstory in no way foreshadows events that take place later in the film. IN ABSOLUTELY NO WAY, ALRIGHT?

Naturally, by the unwritten rules of these movies, The Rock’s surviving daughter Blake finds herself at the quake’s epicentre with Mum’s new ‘boyf’ when disaster strikes (Said boyf, meets a splatty end after deserting Blake in her hour of need conveniently opening the door for a family reconciliation).

A brief encounter with a couple of stereotype Brits - think wannabe Hugh Grant type, and a less nerdy Harry Potter - ensure that Blake has a couple of allies whilst she waits for Dad to ultimately rescue her.

The Rock: only the second biggest chest in the movie

For those not interested in watching San Francisco be destroyed in spectacular 3D special effects, there’s always Blake ample cleavage to admire. Especially as she’s invested in a good bra (cool your boots Germaine).

But the busty babe is also resourceful, putting into action survival skills she has learned from her father. When a fellow companion is wounded she uses her vest to improvise a tourniquet, helpfully revealing more of her wonderful assets. And when a tsunami finally rolls ashore, the poor girl’s undergarments have become very wet. It’s not often that you watch a film with Dwayne Johnson where he doesn’t have the most impressive chest on display.

Exploding helicopter action

While desperately searching for their daughter, Ray and Emma are forced to make a crash landing when an engine on their helicopter fails. With the vehicle spinning out of control, they smash into a clothes store. Miraculously unhurt, the pair have to effect a panicky evacuation as they're both doused in fuel. The viewer patiently waits for fiery payoff, as the wrecked whirlybird inevitably ignites, but....... nothing happens.

There's no fireball, no flames, not even a whiff of smoke. Blasphemy!

In a film whose raison d'etre is the gratuitous celebration of mass destruction it is baffling that director would miss a golden opportunity to add to the carnage by providing the punchline we all expect to this sequence.

There's a time and place to play with audience expectations. This wasn’t it.

Who Knew?

Helicopters have cruise control? Apparently so, as we learn when The Rock has to rescue his wife from the top a building.

You'd think flying the chopper and operating the rescue winch in the fuselage would be impossible, as no-one can be in two places at the same time. But for The Rock the impossible is just another item to be ticked off the to-do list. He simply presses a button labelled HOV and an unexplained autopilot takes over. Despite watching hundreds of films with helicopters this is the first time we've ever seen such a function.

Interesting fact

Despite playing her father, The Rock was only 14 years older than Alexandra Daddario who played his onscreen daughter, Blake.

Review by: Shirley Bellinger

In 1986, Top Gun took the breath away (geddit?) of films fans around the world.

An exciting tale of testosterone-fuelled fighter pilots engaged in death-defying aerial dogfights, the film did however sport one noticeable flaw: no helicopters.

Fortunately, that grave error was corrected a few years later with the release of Fire Birds (1990) - or Wings of the Apache as it’s sometimes called.

This not-entirely-original film is ‘inspired by’ (Hollywood parlance for bare-facedly nicked from) the plot of Top Gun. Still, at least here they’ve made the obvious improvement of swapping all fixed wing aircraft for everyone’s favourite rotor-bladed model. Only makes sense, really.

The plot

America is losing the war on drugs. Narcotics are being smuggled across the border with impunity, as the evil (ie. foreign) cartels have hired a mysterious helicopter ace to shoot down US air patrols.

With their men outgunned and out-flown, Uncle Sam sends his top pilots to an elite flight school. Their mission is simple: prepare for a deadly and visually entertaining attack on their deadly foe.

Will our heroes complete their demanding training? Are they equipped to defeat their lethal enemy? Can they become Top Gun? (Well, would you want to ‘become a Fire Bird’? It just sounds ridiculous.)

Who the hell’s in this?

Given the numerous similarities to Top Gun, it’s perhaps easiest to outline the Fire Birds cast in relation to the original players.

Nicolas Cage: horse faced, hair replacement enthusiast

So, who’s playing the cocky, hot-shot pilot who has more to learn about humility than flying a helicopter? (In other words, the Tom Cruise role.) Yes, it’s everybody’s favourite horse-featured over-actor, hair replacement enthusiast Nicolas Cage.

As Cage’s love interest - the surrogate Kelly McGillis - we have Sean Young, who you’ll remember from Blade Runner – and frankly, nothing else.

That’s because the stroppy moppet was famously so crashingly horrible to work with, even by Hollywood’s own risible standards, that the entire film industry shut her out.

Meanwhile, Tommy Lee Jones stars as a gruff military task-master who belittles, berates and bullies his charges into finding their true potential as crack pilots. (Of course, any similarity to Tom Skerritt’s character in Top Gun is entirely intentional).

Normally a reliable and classy presence in any film, TLJ gives possibly the worst performance of his career. Forced by a duff script to deliver turgid mouthfuls of macho claptrap, the baggy-eyed thespian seems to visibly throw in the towel. Rarely have lines been recited on film with such monotone disinterest.

The only convincing moment comes when an ashen-faced Tommy quietly reflects on the horror of war. Though perhaps he was merely contemplating his next page of dialogue.

Just how similar is this to Top Gun?

Extended aerial training montage? Check.

Alpha male meatheads engaging in testosterone-fuelled braggadocio? Check.

Soft-focus sex scene sound-tracked by a sax-heavy pop song? Check.

We hope those knickers were clean from the wash

Fire Birds even goes so far as giving Cage a dead best friend to grieve over. We all know Goose died in Top Gun. And it’s clearly where this film’s ideas of originality did too.

Mercifully, Fire Birds does spare us the sight, not to mention sound, of Nic Cage performing an a cappella version of a beloved Sixties pop hit.

But given the film’s sole attempt at an original scene involves Cage running around with a pair of scarlet coloured knickers over his head, maybe they should have just stuck to the karaoke.

What is the level of ‘Cage rage’?

Ah, Nicolas Cage. It’s quite possible that somewhere inside him is an actor of subtlety and craft.

Unfortunately, film fans remain stuck with the scenery-chewing show-off who has become a byword for actorly excess. Al Pacino could feasibly watch Cage’s movies and complain that, really, this is all a bit much.

From the moment the film begins, our leading equestrian seems determined to unleash the full range of his dubious talents. There are frequent outbursts of shouting, unexplained goofing, and the kind of exaggerated emotional responses generally only seen in an attention-seeking toddler.

All this grandstanding comes to a head in a marvellous scene of spectacularly unrestrained ‘Cage rage’. Practicing in a flight simulator, our Nic becomes so enamoured of his own abilities that he starts wildly shouting ‘I am the greatest’ over and over again.

Possibly the only thing more bizarre than Cage’s performance in this sequence is the fact that the director, and others responsible for this film, looked through this footage and agreed: “Yes, this is good. We can use this.”

Exploding helicopter action

Fire Birds contains the mother lode of exploding helicopters. And viewers don’t have to wait long before striking chopper fireball gold.

The film immediately throws us into an air combat duel between US pilots and the rogue ‘copter ace. After out-flying his opponents, the villain uses his chopper’s machineguns to shoot two whirlybirds out of the sky.

We also get two further helicopter explosions in the film’s big aerial finale, including Cage dramatically shooting down the villain after an extended dogfight.

And while you might expect the middle of the film to dip slightly, with too many ‘talkie’ bits and little of interest for the true chopper fireball fan, you’d be quite wrong.

In order to hone his skills, Cage is required to practice destroying enemy aircraft in a flight simulator. During the sequence, we get to see the Shergar’s less handsome brother shoot down nine – yes, nine – CGI helicopters.

Artistic merit

The real exploding helicopters are pretty good. Fire and wreckage fill the screen, but there are none of the thrills that the chopper combustion cognoscenti appreciate. For instance, we don’t get to see flaming wreckage fall to the ground, or rotor blades violently sheering off.

Meanwhile, the flight simulator fireballs are basic in the extreme. Little more than pixelated yellow splodges. In fairness, this was 1990 when even cutting edge computer graphics looked little better than a crayoned drawing.

Number of exploding helicopters

This is the point where Fire Birds becomes one of the most controversial films Exploding Helicopter has ever reviewed. Should the computer graphic helicopters destroyed in the flight simulator be counted in the final total?

It’s an important question as, were they to be included, Fire Birds would have a record breaking 13 exploding helicopters (Battleship is the current record holder with eight).

Having cogitated at length on this issue, Exploding Helicopter has felt it improper to include these chopper fireballs in the final tally.

Chopper fireball fans want to see real helicopters blown-up in all their fiery, rotor-bladed glory, not badly rendered computer graphics. Therefore, the final total has been officially ratified as four.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Only known destruction of a computer graphic helicopter.

The only similar examples we’ve seen are the animated chopper fireballs in Dreamworks’ Monsters vs Aliens and one in 22 Jump Street’s closing credits.

Favourite line

Sean Young uses a rocket launcher to shoot down a jet fighter before unconvincingly delivering the line: “Snort that, sucker.”

Tagline

In keeping with a film full of empty bombast, the tagline is the entirely fatuous: ‘The best just got better’.

Review by: Jafo

Still want more? Then you can listen to our discuss Fire Birds on the Exploding Helicopter podcast. Listen on iTunes, Podomatic or YourListen.

Like Tony Blair, grunge and TFI Friday, some things are best left in the nineties. So when I saw the trailer for Jurassic World (2015), I groaned.

Surely the dinosaur franchise, with all its CGI velociraptors and dino-shenanigans, was something best left in the ‘cultural attic’ along with all those discarded Furbies, Tamagotchis and Vengaboys CDs?

But, contrary to my jaded cynicism, it turns out I was wrong. Because far from being an embarrassing rehash Jurassic World is a rollickingly good action film. Maybe that big screen reboot of Saved By The Bell wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. Then again…..

The plot

The dinosaur theme park envisaged in the first film is now a reality. Visitors can watch giant sea-beasts perform in an aquarium, tour fields of grazing diplodocus or cuddle baby triceratops in the petting zoo. (Surprisingly, the death and destruction depicted in the first three films proved no barrier to Jurassic World opening).

But with tourists growing bored of the prehistoric attractions the only way for the park’s owners to keep selling tickets is to unveil new and evermore exciting monsters. So, in a secret laboratory, a sinister scientist has created a genetically modified uber-dinosaur: the Indominus Rex.

Naturally, the hybrid-o-saur escapes its escape-proof cage and begins treating the theme park like a giant all-you-can-eat buffet. Caught up in the carnage are two young brothers visiting their flaky aunt, who is also the park manager. They team-up with the film’s hero, a former Navy Seal turned dino-researcher (apparently the skills are very transferrable).

Can the good guys survive? And will the villains be torn apart by monsters from millennia past? Well, if Jurassic Park one, two and three are anything to go by, then very possibly yes.

Who’s in it?

As the muscular, pecs-flexing hero, Chris Pratt bounces through the film with cocksure confidence of someone who’s read the script and knows they’ll make it safely to the closing credits.

He’s cast alongside Bryce Dallas Howard who follows up wretched turns in Terminator Salvation, Lady In The Water, The Village - frankly just about everything she’s ever been in – with another stinker.

She plays a cold-hearted corporate-wonk who makes an unconvincingly transformation into a fluffy bunny family-type. The scene where her frosty reserve finally melts at the sight of dying diplodocus is so feeble it makes her dad’s turn as Richie Cunningham seem positively Shakespearian.

Meanwhile, a paunchy Vincent D’Onofrio huffs and puffs his was through a role as a Machiavellian military officer. Our Vince once played a svelte soldier in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. But, with his gut straining at his army fatigues, these days it’s clearly more Full Metal Corset.

There’s also an interesting supporting turn from Omar Sy in what’s traditionally known as the ‘black best friend’ role. Hollywood convention would normally dictate that Sy’s character provide a nice snack for a hungry dinosaur. But, in a surprising break with movie cliché the token black die man doesn’t die. Whatever next? Movies with interracial couples?

Favourite bits

The death of the park manager’s painfully English assistant is simultaneously hilarious and gruesome. Posh, sniffy and slightly rude, she appears to have wandered onto set from an episode of Downtown Abbey. Plucked up by a pterosaur, the unfortunate archetype is tossed around a few times before a mososaur emerges from the aquarium and swallows the screeching cliche and pointy-beaked bird whole.

That’s good, but the ending is even better. This sees the Jurassic Park’s iconic T-Rex released from his cage to battle the hybrid-o-saur. Although not without help from a raptor and the mososaur.

Victorious, the T-Rex heads to a hilltop overlooking the park before roaring in triumph. It’s the dino-equivalent of Sylvester Stallone running up the steps in Rocky to celebrate that he’s still the champ.

Exploding helicopter action

With the mongrel-rex wreaking havoc, the park’s owner (Irrfan Khan) decides he has to act. Jumping into a chopper with a couple of soldiers he flies off to locate the mutant dinosaur.

After tracking the beast down, they unleash a hail of bullets which makes Indominus run straight into a giant aviary (a sort Centre Parcs for pterosaurs). In a frenzy, the birds fly out the hole and start to attack the helicopter with one spearing their beak through the chopper’s windscreen.

Panic in the cockpit ensues, and the chopper spirals out-of-control, crashing through the roof of the giant glass dome, before exploding on impact with the ground. “You’ve just been made extinct,” quips the pterosaur. Or possibly not.

Exploding helicopter innovation

I can say with confidence this is the first time a chopper has been destroyed by a pterosaur.

Favourite quote

While Chris Pratt explains the hierarchy of the velociraptors he’s training, a small boy asks him, “Who’s the alpha?”
“You’re looking at him kid,” comes the cocky reply.

Interesting fact

The giant sea creature in the film is known as a mosasaur. These massive sea lizards weighed as much as 15 tonnes - roughly half the weight of the money this film has made (almost $1 billion so far).

Sure, there’s a few bum notes, wooden acting and highly improbable plotting, but this is a terrifically enjoyable movie.

Review by: Jindy

Not another bloody Marvel movie...

Avengers: Age of Ultron is barely out of cinemas, and we already have the next installment of the Marvel cinematic universe.

Crawling into this superhero-stuffed environment is Ant-Man (2015) — someone who wants to use the power of being really, really, small to do something more than simply float around Martin Short's digestive tract.

The plot

Dr Hank Pym has invented a suit that can shrink its wearer to the size of an ant, whilst increasing their strength and power.

Fearing his invention will fall into the wrong hands, Dr Pym buries the research and, conveniently for the plot, decides to keep the suit locked-up at home.

But when his unhinged former protégé nears inventing his own suit (the yellowjacket), Pym enlists ex-con Scott Lang to become Ant-Man, and aided by his estranged daughter tries to stop this tiny invention becoming a massive problem.

Which assortment of misfits are involved in these antics?

Marvel's superhero films follow a routine formula. Take an already-popular male star (e.g. Robert Downey Jr), add an attractive actress in support (e.g. Scarlet Johansson), throw in an experienced actor (e.g. Sir Anthony Hopkins), and line them up against a mediocre villain (e.g. Mickey Rourke).

Our star here is Paul Rudd who dons a grey mask with red eyes to play a swaggering outlaw who becomes a reluctant hero. (An idea that may strike anyone who’s watched Guardians of the Galaxy as slightly familiar).

As the suit's inventor and chief ant-whisperer, you have Michael Douglas as Dr Hank Pym, looking at his most science-y with grey beard and clear glasses. His estranged daughter Hope van Dyne is played by Evangeline Lilly, fresh from her role as the elf Tauriel in the bloated Hobbit trilogy.

A trio of comic relief is headed up by Michael Peña, while Corey Stroll, best known as ‘That Congressman from House of Cards’, plays Pym's former assistant Darren Cross.

Should we call pest control, or does this nest among the better Marvel flicks?

Thus far, Marvel has fired out an impressive run of popular hits. But Ant-Man's pre-production woes put this record in serious jeopardy.

The film suffered a major setback after Edgar Wright, who had penned a script with Joe Cornish, got ants-in-his-pants and suddenly left. He was replaced by Peyton Reed, a director with little of note to his name.

So, with an uninspiring hero, a journeyman director, and superhero saturation, Ant Man had the potential to be an awful, uncoordinated catastrophe.

Happily, it’s anything but. The dialogue is smart and snappy, littered with comedy, and unafraid to poke fun at itself. The performances are equally assured with the cast delivering enjoyably understated performances.

And unlike recent Marvel offerings, the plot is mercifully simple (an uncomplicated caper), with appropriately small scale set pieces (the third act ends on a child's train set). The gossipy tip-montage scene involving lip-synching to Michael Peña's character is a joy to watch.

Negatives

As entertaining as this film is, it’s let down by an unforgivable crime against the art of helicopter explosions.

When a helicopter arrives at Cross's research lab, you know it's going to see some key action later on. Sure enough, Ant-Man and his nemesis yellowjacket duly battle it out in the air on board the chopper.

With the pilots killed in crossfire and the helicopter taking a battering, all the ingredients appear to be in the mixing bowl. We just need Peyton Reed to put this promising mixture into the oven and set it for gas mark ‘chopper fireball’.

Criminally, the battling duo drop out of the chopper, and we are left sitting there wondering: "where the hell is my helicopter explosion?" Inexcusable.

Exploding helicopter action

What's doubly disgraceful is that the audience if left to make do with a token piece of helicopter fireball action. Controversially, it comes in a promotional video for what the yellowjacket suit could do when fully operational — the choppers involved are therefore computer fabrications, the lowest of the low on the exploding helicopter scale.

In the promo video, we get to see the military prowess of the yellowjacket suit. In a blink and you’ll miss it sequence we see a running soldier miniaturise followed by the explosion of three helicopters — presumably from the yellowjacket jumping into each? But who knows — as we don't linger long enough to find out.

The scene also features in one of the film's teasers.

Artist merit

Like the cause of the choppers' destruction, minuscule.

Exploding helicopter innovation

This isn't the first film that's had computer-simulated chopper casualties (see Fire Birds), but this is the first where we've seen one explode as a result of an insect-sized man.

Favourite line

"This is the work of gypsies!"

Interesting fact

The film uses some impressive special effects work to de-age Michael Douglas back to his eighties pomp. They’re incredibly well done with the recovering sex addict looking like he’s just stepped off the set of Wall Street. It’s certainly more successful than our Mike’s own attempts via the plastic surgeon’s knife.

Review by: Jafo

…..or, to give the film a more accurate title: The Fruitless Search For Anything Vaguely Resembling Entertainment.

Yee Gods. At Exploding Helicopter we know our job will involve watching some right royal stinkers. But, even by the sorry standards of the worst works we’ve ever endured, The Hunt For Eagle One (2006) is stupefyingly dull.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a towering work of tedium; a monument of mundanity; or if you want to get really poncey, basilica of boredom. In other words, it’s not very good.

The plot

Al-Qaeda terrorists are hiding out in the Filipino Jungle plotting a chemical weapon attack, so a squad of American soldiers are sent in to assassinate them.

But when the hit squad are captured, a rescue team is sent in to complete the mission and get our boys back.

Can our heroes rescue the prisoners? Will they stop the terror plot? Or will we all just turn off the TV and go and do something less boring instead?

Will the hostages be brutally slain? Can the villains’ terror plot be stopped? Or will we turn off the TV and go and do something less boring instead?

Who the hell’s in this?

There’s a predictably low-rent cast in this straight to DVD actioner. Leading the heroic rescue team is martial arts nearly-man Mark Dacascos. Over the years, our Mark has made some good films (Drive), some cult films (the gloriously daft DNA), and a shed load of fantastically boring films. (No prizes for guessing which camp this one falls into).

Which is rather a shame, as Dacascos is a great martial artist and a decent actor to boot. Sadly, he’s never regularly married those talents to a quality film. It’s probably why lesser lights have enjoyed better careers.

Mark Dacascos: nearly man

And talking of wasted talents, the film also stars perennial B-movie presence Rutger Hauer (who briefly appears as an army General). Despite a magnetic screen presence, the blonde Dutchman has spent the last 30 years working almost exclusively in DTV dreck.

You’d have thought he could have enjoyed a profitable and prestigious career as a supporting actor in better grade Hollywood fare. Indeed, ten years ago it seemed Hauer was trying to reorient his career in this direction, with small but memorable turns in Batman Begins and Sin City.

But it proved a false dawn, as Rutger was soon back on the DTV treadmill and pimping-out his mellifluous voice for television adverts. Today, he’s probably best known as ‘the bloke what does them butter adverts’.

Just how dull is this film?

The Hunt For Eagle One was so mind-numbing that at several points in the film I contemplated self-harming to check if my nervous system was still functioning.

It’s not that nothing happens - there’s a typical quotient of gun battles and explosions - rather that a lifeless malaise infects the production.

Many a predictable plot has been enlivened by a colourful villain, inventive action or a wise-cracking hero. Here, the filmmakers eschew all that in favour of the bland or lacklustre. It all adds up to an anaemic action movie.

Exploding helicopter action

After the assassination squad are captured, the army initially tries to rescue them by sending in a couple of helicopters. Unfortunately, given that we’re only 20 minutes into a 90 minute movie we can be pretty certain this mission isn’t going to end successfully. Sure enough, the guerrillas are armed with some rocket launchers which they use to shoot down the rescue helicopters.

Artistic merit

Frankly, there’s very little merit to these chopper fireballs. The explosions are brief and the fireball effects are inserted over the top of the helicopters. Clearly they couldn’t afford to actually blow them up.

Number of exploding helicopters

Two. We get to see another crash, but it doesn't explode.

Favourite line

Exploding Helicopter loves the cod military bollocks characters spout in these kind of films. In keeping with the film’s universally bland approach, the soldiers’ mission is unexcitingly codenamed “Operation Housekeeping”.

This allows one actor to memorably declare the line: “We are go for Housekeeping.”

Which, ultimately, is good advice. Certainly your time would be more profitably and entertainingly spent doing the hoovering than watching this rubbish.

Interesting fact

A sequel, The Hunt For Eagle One: Crash Point was filmed the same year. Mercifully, after fast-forwarding through the film Exploding Helicopter, was relieved to find that it did not feature a chopper fireball sparing us the need to actually watch this ordure.

Review by: Jafo

When you watch a prison movie, the worst crime you witness shouldn’t be the film itself.

A sequel to the barely serviceable sci-fi action flick Fortress (1992), this film deserves to be locked up for its own wrongdoing. Watching it felt like serving a sentence for a crime I didn’t commit.

Truly, there is no justice in this world.

The plot

Our hero is John Brennick. He’s on the run having escaped a high-tech prison run by the evil Men-Tel Corporation (the events of the first film).

Unfortunately, within minutes of the start of Fortress 2 (2000), Brennick is recaptured and sent to Men-Tel’s swanky new, top security jail.

Naturally our man resolves to escape, but breaking-out this time looks infinitely trickier. Certainly, tying together bedsheets isn’t going to work this time.

That’s because Men-Tel’s latest penitentiary is orbiting the Earth. Yup, that’s right. They’ve given it a sci-fi upgrade and stuck it in space.

The cast

Brennick is played by Christopher Lambert, beloved star of Highlander (and frankly not much else). While his cinematic oeuvre may be entirely forgettable, the French thespian does possess a most unusual voice. His stereotypical Gallic purr is tempered by a constricted, raspy tone - as if someone were slowly throttling him. (There’s a joke here about Frogs croaking, but I like to think I’m above such things).

Patrick Malahide: hammy entertainment

In the role of the cruel and villainous prison warden (aren’t they always) we have veteran TV actor Patrick Malahide. Normally found in prestigious small screen series like The Singing Detective, The Pickwick Papers or more recently Game Of Thrones, our Pat is clearly aware that this is a not a very good movie.

Calculating that the only way to salvage his professional reputation is not to be caught taking this part seriously, Malahide delivers a performance of pure panto ham. Cue over-the-top line-readings and theatrical eye-rolling. Shameless hamming it may be, but it does provide what little entertainment there is to be gleaned here.

And adding to the eclectic mix of stars is seventies blaxsploitation legend Pam Grier. Made just three short years after her career revitalising turn in Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, her appearance here is a reminder of how quickly the air can go out of your comeback. Just ask John Travolta.

What prison movie clichés are there?

Let’s see, is there an argument over who gets the top bunk? Yup.

Does a fight between two prisoners escalate into a mass brawl in the canteen? Affirmative.

And what about the obligatory scene where the warden warns inmates about doing their time ‘my way or the hard way’? But of course.

I could also mention the gratuitous shower scene where we watch a shapely female prisoner lather her nellies, but you knew that already.

Fortress 2's helicopter in its natural cinematic state

Exploding helicopter action

While Fortress 2 regurgitates prison movie clichés with alacrity, chopper fireball fans also get to see their favourite film trope.

This happens early in the film as Lambert is being recaptured. After his hideout is discovered, croaky Christopher attempts to flee in a jeep. As a helicopter pursues him, Lambert brings out a bazooka which he shoots at the chopper.

Artistic merit

We’re treated to a nice fuselage-destroying explosion. We get to see the wreckage fall to the ground behind Lambert who does not look at the burning debris, because as we all know, heroes don’t look at explosions.

Exploding helicopter innovation

While the method of destruction is very common, it’s unusual to see an exploding helicopter in a prison movie.

The only other such film to include a chopper fireball is The Last Castle (2001) starring Robert Redford and his amazingly preserved head of hair (which really should have its own screen credit).

Favourite line

In order to escape, Lambert enlists the help of a small number of fellow inmates. His plan involves hacking into the prison’s communications system using a radio type device. This ends up with one of the prisoners boasting: “I can build a radio out of a milk carton and two condom wrappers.”

Sadly, as the prisoner fashions the device out of obviously more useful items, we don’t see them make good on this outlandish claim.

Interesting fact

Arnold Schwarzenegger was at one time attached to star in the original Fortress. But after the Austrian word-mangler dropped out (to make Last Action Hero of all things) the generous $60m budget was cleaved to a modest $15m.

Review by: Jafo

Check out other reviews by our friends at Explosive Action

The term “cinematic universe” has become all the rage recently.

This rather highfalutin concept is used by moviemakers and nerdy films buff to bundle together films and characters as a single, coherent, body of work. (Although to the cynics at Exploding Helicopter it’s just a pretentious way of saying sequel or spin-off).

But long before Marvel’s avengers assembled or the Fast teamed up with the Furious, the makers of the American Ninja series were boldly expanding the cosmos of the stealth assassin franchise.

It may have been in somewhat less celebrated circumstances. But, as we’ll explain later, the manner in which they did it was no less convoluted.

The plot

A renegade British army officer and a militant Muslim Sheik plan to blow up New York with a nuclear bomb. While they engineer their scheme the unlikely duo (who have as much in common as Woody Allen and Osama Bin Laden) hide out in a secret base in Africa surrounded by an army of highly trained ninjas.

Desperate to stop radioactive Armageddon, the US Government sends in a team of Special Forces.
But when their mission is thwarted they form an unlikely alliance with a post-apocalyptic S&M biker gang (who just happen to be skulking about in the African veldt).

Will the Big Apple be reduced to a charred cinder? Can a bunch of gay bikers help our heroes? And will any element of the plot make sense? (Don’t ask me, I’m just the reviewer)

The Cinematic American Ninja-verse

While American Ninja may have started off a straight-forward franchise, it quickly become a complicated mess of recasting and returning stars.

Dudikoff inexplicably teams up with the Village People

The first two films featured Michael Dudikoff as the karate-pyjama wearing hero. But when he declined further involvement, the series was rebooted with David Bradley as the new lead (American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt). Though, it wasn’t until American Ninja 4 (1990) that things really became complicated

Despite bailing on the series, the producers were still hot for Mikey Duds and persuaded him to return to start alongside David Bradley. Unfortunately, it quickly transpired that the American Ninja-verse wasn’t big enough for Dudikoff’s ego.

Clash of the egos

Legend has it (or at least IMDB trivia) that Dudikoff only agreed to participate in AN4 if his character was portrayed, at the expense of Bradley, as the real hero of the film.

So, rather than watch our two heroes work together to save the day, Bradley is captured so that the Dude can prove his alpha male status by rescuing him. In fact the film is almost derailed by Mikey Boy’s desire to trump his co-star.

Take for instance the scene where Bradley uses super-human reflexes to catch an arrow that’s been fired at him. Not to be outdone, the ‘koff proceeds to catch the arrow between his teeth. Honestly, I don’t know why they didn’t just get their cocks out and have done with.

Verdict

Dudikoff giving it the full 'hai-ya'

By every conventional critical measure American Ninja is a mess. With a lopsided structure, an incoherent plot and warring co-stars it should be all but unwatchable. Yet, with its mismatched villains, nonsensical storylines, and bickering heroes it has a surreal anarchy that is unique.

I hesitate to call American Ninja 4 a good film. But it’s not a film you’d ever forget watching.

Exploding helicopter action

Despite so many films demonstrating their dangers, helicopters remain a curiously popular getaway vehicle amongst villains. And we’re given another illustration of that point here.

As his plan falls to pieces, the evil Sheik attempts to abscond in a chopper. As battle rages across his fortress, one of the rebels shoulders an RPG and fires it at the whirlybird. Striking its target the doomed helicopter explodes in a fiery eruption. Well, the film’s not called American Ninja: Annihilation for nothing.

Artistic merit

Frankly, this was a disappointing chopper fireball. Sadly, the helicopter doesn’t really explode. Instead, an image of an explosion is cut in over the helicopter that was previously onscreen. The camera then cuts to the wreckage of a model helicopter falling to the ground. The director, no doubt conscious of the shonkiness of this sequence, wisely does not linger on this scene and hastily cuts away.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Erm, we’re stuggling with this one. Only the second known film with the word Ninja in the title to include an exploding helicopter.

Favourite line

My favourite line occurs during the rogue Sheik’s failed getaway bid. As he jumps into the chopper’s cockpit, the pilot asks, “Where too?”

The answer, showing no little knowledge of the Islamic faith, is simplicity itself. “Mecca,” comes the reply.

Interesting fact

In a further expansion of the cinematic universe, David Bradley returned three years later for American Ninja 5 (1993) - although it’s debatable whether it should really be considered part of the series.

Having starred in entries three and four as the character Sean Davidson, observant viewers will notice that Bradley’s name in this film has mysteriously changed to Joe Kastle.

That’s because this ‘sequel’ was actually filmed as American Dragon and meant to be entirely unrelated to the Ninja series. But, just before release, wobbling producers hastily rebadged it as another American Ninja sequel on the grounds it’d be easier to market.

Review by: Jafo

Check out reviews of American Ninja 4: The Annihilation by our friends at Comeuppance Reviews and DTV Connoisseur.

Terminator Woman

Spy Game

Iron Thunder

Black Dynamite

Monsters vs Aliens

The Eliminator

Cradle 2 The Grave

Piranhaconda

Lone Survivor

Black Sunday

Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection

The Interview

American Ninja

San Andreas

Fire Birds

Jurassic World

Ant-Man

The Hunt For Eagle One

Fortress 2: Re-entry

American Ninja 4: The Annihilation