At first glance, Firefox might easily be mistaken for a James Bond movie. Based on Welshman Craig Thomas's 1977 novel, its title certainly sounds like it could have slotted twixt Moonraker (1979) and Octopussy (1983) rather more neatly than the cumbersomely wordy For Your Eyes Only (1981). The attitude-heavy, stormy-skied poster[>] promises uncompromisingly macho, 'techno-thriller' delights - and indeed the picture's box-office success is 'credited' with inspiring the Tom Clancys of this world to make this sub-genre such a publishing phenomenon. The basic plot - in which our rugged ex-serviceman hero must penetrate the Iron Curtain, conduct dangerous cloak-and-dagger derring-do in Moscow, before stealing the USSR's eponymous new super-plane from a remote, heavily-fortified base - is also pretty indistinguishable from 007's usual escapades.
   As if fully cognizant of these similarities, director Clint Eastwood - working from a script by Alex Lasker and Wendell Wellman - seems to go out of his way to ensure Firefox is as un-Bond-like as possible. Thomas's protagonist was British; here he's American: the USAF's one-time star pilot Mitchell Gant, played by Eastwood himself with a surprising combination of swagger ("I'm the best there is") and vulnerability.
   Suffering (intermittently) from what we'd now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - caused by his horrific experiences during the Vietnam War - the semi-agoraphobic Gant has to be almost literally dragged away from his idyllic Alaskan hideout by his former employers. Transported to Moscow, he proves less than adept at the kind of shenanigans which come so easily to the likes of James Bond and, a generation later, Jason Bourne: "I watched your performance," snarls his 'helper' Pavel (Warren Clarke) after Gant has shakily posed as a shady American businessman, "... it was not very convincing."
   And anyone holding their breath for the kind of slinky femme fatale with whom messrs Connery, Lazenby and Moore became inevitably entangled will end up rapidly asphyxiated. Among dozens of speaking-parts listed in the end credit-roll, there is, astonishingly, only a single woman: Dimitra Arliss as fiftyish scientist Natalia, a sternly sympathetic lady in lab-whites who could never be mistaken for a a Honey Ryder.
   Gant has more than enough on his plate coping with the unusual demands of his mission to even think about 'extra-curricular' activities: not only will he have to make off with 'The Firefox' itself - a super-advanced plane which can fly at MACH five (six at a push) and, when it finally appears some 75 minutes in, is revealed as a brutalist wonder in frozen pewter - he'll need to think in Russian if he's going to be able to activate its thought-controlled weapon-system. (It would have perhaps been niftier if Gant were forced to think only in Russian while at the controls - any English-language thoughts to instantly trigger alarm-bells.)
   As it happens, Gant was selected for this particular job partly because his mother happened to be Russian (and his Alaskan digs do have a whiff of the dacha from Solaris about them) - though when he actually speaks the language his American accent is so pronounced it's ludicrous that his 'undercover' status isn't rumbled by any of the Soviet authorities. This is a minor implausibility in the grander Firefox scheme of things, of course - on a wider scale, it seems a rash move by the Americans to respond to being left behind in the 'arms race' by simply sending one of their chaps over to cheekily make off with the relevant hardware. And surely such a theft would serve to instantly and severely exacerbate what's evidently a delicate global-political situation.
   Such nagging concerns wouldn't really matter if Firefox had actually worked as the gripping, psychologically-nuanced thriller which it clearly aspires to be. Partly thanks to a parade of high-calibre Brit thespian talent (Ronald Lacey, Nigel Hawthorne, Freddie Jones) the early and middle stretches aren't bad at all: after a strikingly low-key opening (the title-card is a particular model of no-nonsense understatement), the picture delivers some absorbing suspense in the dimly-lit Moscow sequences - so long as the viewer doesn't mind the tell-tale German signs on the (Viennese) underground walls. If nothing else, the film is priceless as a time-capsule of how the East was viewed by the West during the latter years of the Cold War: a nightmarish, drab, grubby police-state where dissidents (mainly Jewish) look to an American hero for salvation, and where sinisterly officious officials are forever demanding 'documentation.'
    Proceedings only start to lose their way after Clint actually steals the plane: it's ironic that when he gets off the ground, the picture itself becomes more and more earth-bound. For what seems like an age, we alternate clunkily between the Firefox cockpit (where Gant provides a running commentary, supposedly for the black-box recorded but obviously for our benefit), and sub-Strangelove control-rooms in the USA and USSR. This is all just build-up to an extended but decidedly ho-hum dogfight between Firefox and Firefox II - the latter being the Soviet's back-up which is hurriedly despatched to bring down the larcenous Yankee by any means necessary. The ensuing aerial scrap requires Gant to belatedly deploy that much-ballyhooed thought-control weapons-system - but the latter is handled as such an arbitary afterthought that it comes across as just the kind of silly, pseudo-futuristic techno-gimmick that even 007 would dismiss as far-fetched.

Neil Young
7.Sep.08

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USA 
136m (timed)

director : Clint Eastwood (also Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, Bird, etc)
editors : 
 Ron Spang (also Any Which Way You Can, The Dead Pool, A Perfect World, etc)
 Ferris Webster (also The Great Escape, The Manchurian Candidate [1962], The Magnificent Seven, etc)

seen 30.Aug.08 London
(BFI South Bank : public show : complimentary ticket)
with thanks to Kieron Corless