the groundhog day project

Recent high school graduate who, sure, has flown a fighter jet at least once--we see it in flashback--plans a rescue effort in unnamed Northern African nation along with a few friends and a retired pilot in three days (and that includes executing the mission itself). The plot alone is silly. But, worse--and I almost wish I had time to catalog all of this--it uses the same footage over and over again. Obvious case in point: every single time Doug fires a weapon, there's the same shot of thumb pressing button. And, when it's the machine gun, always the same closeup of it firing: And, then there's everything in act one between Doug's father's capture sequence and Doug and Chappy teaming up. Doug drives like an asshole. Then he fights with Knotcher for also driving like an asshole. And, then they can't fight because--and this is an almost clever infodump scene--Doug can't get in trouble for fighting again. Then, brother shows up with Doug's ...

For a movie that hinges on some rather exciting sequences, Iron Eagle starts out with some really slow, boringly scored footage of jets flying. Like we were all going to get off just seeing jets flying... which maybe we were in 1986. I know there were these books in our school library that were basically just visual and technical guides to military vehicles and it was like pro-America propaganda and war porn wrapped up in a series of... I guess they were Time Life books, but I was never as into them as a couple friends of mine were. But, give me a good action movie with Americans taking on Communists or Arabs for, you know, whatever reason, and surely I cheered like anyone else did in the theater. Iron Eagle was, of course, one of a string of jingoistic action movies in the 80s that offered an extra bit of fun for a kid--the protagonist was not some stuffy adult, was not some guy who follows all the rules (And, how was it so fucking common for protagonists in so many 80s films,...