Titreenp
SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?
Inclubabu
Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.
Dirtylogy
It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.
robertmaybeth
Who is this movie for? If your favorite war films are along the lines of "Platoon", "Fury", "Hamburger Hill", "The Beast of War", and "Battle of Britain" this movie combines some of the best elements from all of these to produce a well-made movie about Navy carrier A-6 pilots in the final years of American involvement in the Vietnam war. Set in 1972, shortly after President Nixon ordered "Operation Linebacker" against North Vietnam (an American bombing campaign intended to convince the communist leaders to return to the peace table), "Intruder" shows the lives of Navy pilots who fly the, by then usually pointless, bombing raids against North Vietnam. We meet the real star of the movie from the very beginning: the aircraft they fly is the Grumman A-6 intruder bomber - a slow speed but very advanced aircraft crammed full of the latest American electronic technology, getting a real workout in the deadly skies over North Vietnam. I won't reveal too many plot details here since the real show is watching the pilots do their stuff - apparently bombing North Vietnam was the most heavily defended area in the world and bristled with guns of every caliber and hundreds of SAM sites - and was extremely dangerous for American pilots. But by this time in the war, .the US had developed an anti-radar missile, the AGM-45 Shrike; that fired a 150 lb warhead with the ability to home in on the radar beam from a Vietnamese Sam site and destroy it. Watching the Intruder pilots narrowly avoiding anti-aircraft and SAM missiles is exciting stuff and to me the best parts of the movie. A great military movie that's in the same general category as "Top Gun" but with a much tighter story and better action sequences. If you're a military/war movie buff, don't miss this film.
MovieBuffMarine
The story was lacking! Being a veteran, a fan and supporter of Naval Aviation, I loved all the air and carrier operations sequences. They were all realistic thanks to U.S. Navy cooperation. But being a Coonts and Jake Grafton fan, in my opinion, the actors didn't bring much life to the characters established in Stephen Coont's best selling novel and the screen writers went their own direction.Danny Glover is a good actor. But in my opinion, I didn't feel the "command presence" of Cdr. Frank Camparelli that I felt reading the pages of the novel. Glover put in the demeanor of Camparelli, but didn't get the command presence right. (If you want to get a good idea of command presence, check out the performance of the late Richard Crenna in "First Blood." Or see Gene Hackman's performances when he plays high ranking military officers like in "Behind Enemy Lines" and "Crimson Tide.") Brad Johnson was okay as Jake Grafton, but was Luke warm compared to the novel version. For example: if you read the court martial and testimony of Jake Grafton in the novel and see the on screen version, you will be highly disappointed in how the film presented it. It's like they watered the Grafton character down! I thought Willem Dafoe's performance as Lcdr Virgil "Tiger" Cole was the most convincing and closer to the novel version than everyone else who had a character from the novel. The movie Tiger in my opinion was a little better. But unfortunately, one good performance doesn't make the whole story.The Callie/Jake relationship from the novel was turned into a corny subplot for the movie! I really loved the way it was presented in the novel and loathed the way they interpreted it on screen! Callie in the novel was a pretty smart woman, but in the movie she didn't seem that way and her character lacked dimension.Others have already stated other differences, so yeah I know, the movie will always be different from the novel. But it doesn't mean the movie can't live up to the novel. A good example of a movie adaption of a novel that is a good interpretation is "The Great Santini." Of course like all novel - movie adaptations, not everything from "The Great Santini" book is in the movie. But if ever there is movie that is true to the novel (in characters and plot), it's "The Great Santini." I think if "Flight of the Intruder" was true to and lived up to the novel, then I would agree that it shouldn't be underrated.Despite the nice Naval Aviation and action sequences, this movie leaves a lot to be desired in the story and characters. Yes, there will always be differences in a novel - movie adaptation, but it doesn't mean the movie should stray so far away from the book that you get an inferior interpretation.
jrnorman
Watch this movie for the flying scenes! It has some the very best shots of an Intruder still or in flight. This aircraft is now out of service with the Navy except as a fueler but I can testify that this aircraft is down right dominating and scary to anyone on the ground when they make a low level pass and this movie captured it all! That said, I read the book too and yes it is a lot different from the book but then most movies are. The question is does it conform to the spirit of the movie and Flight of the Intruder is close. It does take some short cuts which are even more obvious to a Navy vet but over all, this is one of my favorite Vietnam War movies and about the only one that gives a decent treatment to the carrier pilots.The romantic part is not much and probably left in to keep it from not having any attractive females but it sure is not needed for dramatic effect.The political and legal junk is really over blown and trite but if sufficient detail were included the movie would have been 3 hours long.It is a good "Tiger flick" (war movie) for a rainy day and it has an honored place in my DVD collection!
Stanton McCandlish
It was interesting in a number of ways to see the Vietnam War from the perspective of bomber pilots (as opposed to fighter pilots and ground troops, stories we've all seen/heard/ read many times by now). But somehow this movie just falls flat. It is not engaging. Suspension of disbelief is very difficult to achieve. Even the court martial scene comes across as wooden and preachy, despite trying to make very valid points. The lead actor, the relatively unknown Brad Johnson, who looks remarkably like a young Tom Berenger, is quite *believable* as a navy pilot - as the adoptive son of a USAF F-111 pilot I grew up around men just like this - but the performance simply isn't compelling. In the end we really don't *care* about these characters or their actions. Tom Sizemore (long before he was a known Hollywood "face"), Ving Rhames (with a full head of hair), and Willem Dafoe are basically just wasted in this movie; their roles have very little room for growth or expression. Danny Glover's frequently humorous turn as the CO is faintly rewarding, and a very young David Schwimmer makes a kind of cute appearance. But when all is said and done this movie comes across as having very little in the way of a real point. The feel-good, triumphant music that floods us toward the end, as the planes are launching off the carrier, comes across as just downright silly and, worse yet, patriotically manipulative. There is also a marked lack of complexity when it comes to the Vietnamese. Except for one very brief moment when a drunken Johnson looks up, after falling in the mud, at a family of locals, whose faces seem to show a mixture of fear, disapproval and indifference, the indigenous population don't have any roles or presence, other than as either whores or largely faceless enemies. On a positive note, the visual effects are actually quite impressive for the early '90s, especially in the bombing raid on Hanoi. Many CGI attempts at realistically depicting missiles and aircraft have done worse than the apparently model-based effects in this film.
