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STEALTH
Columbia/Phoenix Pictures/Original Film, 2005

Directed by Rob Cohen
Written by W. D. Richter
Produced by Michael Medavoy, Neal Moritz and Laura Ziskin
Music by Brian Transeau (as BT)
Cinematography by Dean Semler
Edited by Steven Rivkin
Visual Effects Supervisors: Joel Hynek

Cast
Josh Lucas (Lt. Ben Gannon)
Jessica Biel (Kara Wade)
Jamie Foxx (Henry Purcell)
Sam Shepard (Capt. George Cummings)
Joe Morton (Capt. Dick Marshfield)
Richard Roxburgh (Keith Orbit)
Ebon Mass-Bachrach (Tim)
Wentworth Miller (Voice of EDI)

With each new film from director Rob Cohen, it’s becoming apparent that The Fast and the Furious was a fluke. With a clever, concise script and a fun cast, Cohen managed to churn out a summer popcorn flick that actually delivered thrills and some cool characters to hang with for an hour and forty-minutes. But then came the asinine xXx, which re-teamed Cohen with Vin Diesel from The Fast and the Furious but only managed to induce migraines with its sheer action stupidity and x-treme sports gimmicks. And now we have Stealth, a twenty-first century re-do of Top Gun with the technology of Firefox and the rebellious machinery of the Terminator films. Stealth has larger smarts than xXx and a fine set of actors, but it still offers viewers a hollow CGI action assault and a sure warning sign that the dog days of summer have arrived.

Sometime in the future…when everything looks just the same as today except for even sleeker stealth bombers…the navy introduces an astonishing computer-controlled plane with the porn ready name “Evasive Deep Invader”(EDI, or “Eddie”). For the three specially trained navy pilots who must fly with and train the A.I. plane, Kara Wade, Henry Purcell, and Ben Gannon, EDI presents a conundrum. Will ‘he’ eventually replace the pilots, or is he a way, as their Capt. Cummings (Sam Shepard) tells them, to avoid endangering pilots’ lives? Capt. Dick Marshfield has further doubts about the A.I.’s performance, and considering that he’s played by Joe Morton, who also played computer inventor Miles Dyson from Terminator 2, people should probably listen to what he has to say about computers that might run amuck.

EDI does eventually malfunction after a lightning strike blasts his globe-brain, and he starts rapidly writing his own programming. Explaining his actions in a smooth, calm voice, he decides he must carry out the orders within his files without human interference; he blazes out to make a strike in Russia. Our brave pilots scramble to stop EDI, while Capt. Cummings sends the Russians info to help them knock down the out-of-control plane.

Hey, double-word score! We’ve got two Stanley Kubrick copycats for the price of one! I would mention the names of the two movies, but I really don’t wish to soil the reputation of two of the finest science fiction films ever created with a comparison to a mindless popcorn flick like Stealth, so let’s just say that Stealth borrows extensively from…uh…Barry Lyndon and Lolita.

The constant reminders of Kubrick seem awfully bizarre in a simpleminded thriller. Listening to Josh Lucas engage in a semantic discussion with EDI while flying low under Russian radar feels downright strange. Scenes of EDI’s glowing-red light observing people arguing about him, and then using the information against them later, also make you wonder exactly why referencing the film that I am currently calling Barry Lyndon seems so important to the filmmakers. If anything, you don’t want to remind your viewers of a classic when they should just concentrate on your explosions and zippy plane battles.

And Stealth does have some zip and zing in its action. An early surgical strike on a terrorist enclave in downtown Rangoon has some vertiginous camera swoops and editing that makes the action clear (not often true in Cohen’s films). A later pilot bail-out among raining debris has a true feeling of plummeting helplessness and desperation. Most of the other aerial shoot-outs and high-speed acrobatics have a similar thrill to them; it seems that Cohen has recovered from the jagged and random action antics of xXx.

However, on the ground Stealth acts like a single engine prop plane, one that stalls too frequently. Biel, Lucas, and Foxx are fine actors, but the movie transforms them all into bad actors. Foxx signed onto this movie before he turned into an Academy Award-winner, and the performance he gives here leans more toward his Booty Call years than the mature performer we saw in Ray. Dramatically, Foxx doesn’t have much of a role in the film except to act like EDI’s buddy when his fellow wingman mistrust the machine. Lucas and Biel share romantic tension in some very dull scenes; Lucas has better material with Sam Shepard, who acts the professional as always—even when he’s just collecting a check so he can go write more depressing stage plays.

Weird Kubrick references and bland script aside, Stealth would almost work as a decent ‘n’ dumb summer entertainment flick if it had quit while it was ahead. Instead, a gratuitous last act emerges which knocks apart the A.I.-on-a-rampage premise and turns the film into a condensed version of Behind Enemy Lines. If you paid your nickel to see a film about jet planes, a tepid shoot-out on the ground isn’t exactly the finale you expect or want. The ‘redemption’ of EDI doesn’t work at all, and even borders on Christ sacrificial imagery (what?). The filmmakers should have remembered the power of their two primary source Kubrick films—Barry Lyndon and Lolita—and kept truer to the frightening power of technology out of control, and the myopic humans responsible for it.

(Okay, okay, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Dr. Strangelove. There, I said it.)

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