Stealth
rated PG-13

When you go to see a movie about a robot plane that becomes evil, you don’t expect it to be good. In that sense, the audience is self-selecting—they’ve all seen the previews, and something about the story of a rogue stealth fighter jet called Eddie appeals to them. They know that it’s from the same director as The Fast and the Furious and xXx,  and on some level they’re thinking… yeah, I want more of… that.
So to expect Stealth to be anything other than ridiculous is kind of unfair, like taunting a dog by pretending to throw a ball, but then holding onto the ball at the last minute so the dog goes running off in search of God-knows-what. It’s unfair because the dog, like Stealth, just isn’t that smart—but it was born that way so it can’t help it.

With that understanding, Stealth was kind of fun. The movie wastes no time introducing the robot plane to its human wingmen (Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel and Jamie Foxx), and we know there’s gonna be trouble since instead of being gunmetal gray like the human’s stealth planes, Eddie is kind of brown-colored… but is it cockroach-brown or the warm brown of a happy pecan? Shortly thereafter Eddie is struck by lightning, the great life-giver, and we know his moral compass has become fried because he starts downloading music illegally so he can play it while he flies. I cannot stress strongly enough that I am not making this up.

The flight scenes are an enjoyable fantasy rush. The nimble future-fighters rarely fly more than a few dozen feet above the ground, and the movie consists mostly of long chains of insane acrobatics in valleys and mountain ranges and cities. The camera is equally frenetic, swinging in and out of bomb bays, zooming along with missiles, through the jets’ exhaust, into the cockpits, out of the cockpits, inside Eddie’s brain, through holes in wings, holes in parachutes, back and forth over Jessica Biel’s ass, and skimming along the surface of the Earth at previously unimaginable speeds, as if the camera were being wielded by a dimension-bending flying pixie on crack.

Some bits are harder to swallow than others, such as the automated refueling blimp. Yes, it looks cool, but seems like it would be moving too slowly for the human stealth planes (which do not, unlike Eddie, appear to have VTOL capability) to refuel at. It also seems silly when the ancient Russian fighters planes so easily start taking chunks out of our beloved future tech.

But Sam Shepard turns in an actual, albeit surely effortless, performance as the military program leader, and the rest is carried by the slick and shiny special effects. Maybe that’s enough.