Hijack!

“Breaker, breaker, this is Bulldog headin’ South on old Double Nickel. Anyone out there got their ears on?”

Ah, the Seventies! When sideburns were long, trousers flared, and the world couldn’t get enough of truck drivers.

It’s true. During the decade, driving a vehicle for a living implausibly became the epitome of cool. Cinemas were gridlocked with films such as Smokey and the Bandit, Breaker! Breaker! and Convoy. Radios blared with the twangy sound of ‘truck-driving country’. And millions of people inexplicably tried to decode the mysteries of truckers’ CB radio slang.

Trying to explain such a strange moment in human culture is beyond the purview of this humble website. So instead, let’s ‘break 1-9’ and remain ‘cool on the stool’ to review Hijack! (1973). (And no, Exploding Helicopter doesn’t know what any of that means either).

The plot

Two truck drivers are hired to transport an obligatory ‘mysterious cargo’ across the country. They’re told it’s a top-secret job on behalf of the government, and for reasons of security they can’t be told the contents of their load.

At first they’re reluctant to take on the job, until they see the big bucks on offer. But they quickly (and predictably) come to rue the decision. To absolutely nobody’s surprise, a ruthless gang of villains – intent on stealing their mysterious cargo – starts giving chase as soon as they’re ‘ten-four, good buddy’ing down the freeway.

Can our heroes of highway haulage safely complete their risky run? Will the baddies succeed in their fiendish plans? Do viewers have the slightest hope of understanding a fifth of the CB-flavoured gobbledygook being spouted throughout? Probably not.

The cast

In the film’s proverbial driving seat is TV legend, David Janssen. The passing years and the actor’s premature death make it easy to forget what a huge star he was during the Sixties and Seventies. His trademark show – The Fugitive – was a colossal hit, pulling in a mind-boggling 72% of the American population for its climatic episode, a now unimaginable figure.

Riding shotgun – so to speak - is grizzled character actor, Keenan Wynn. A familiar, whiskery presence in countless westerns, he’s perfectly cast here as Janssen’s rough n’ ready driving buddy, always ready with a salty one-liner and a two-fisted approach to problem-solving.

It’s worth noting that poor Janssen, a raging alcoholic and heavy smoker, was just 42 when he made this movie but looked a good 15 years older. His 27-year-old romantic interest Lee Purcell meanwhile, scarcely looked out of her teens, which lends a distinctly queasy and implausible flavour to their interactions.

Hijacking your time

Exploding Helicopter is going to cut to the chase with this review: Hijack! is not a very good film.

What promises to be a high-octane thriller, filled with burning rubber and roaring engines, in fact turns out to be a pedestrian drama that never gets out of first gear. Despite a brief 75-minute run-time, it still manages to spin its wheels through several torpor-inducing sections. And it’s so blandly staged that you wonder if the director fell asleep at the wheel.

Exploding Helicopter couldn’t help but compare this duff automotive offering unfavourably to a very similar TV movie made just a few years earlier, Duel (1971).

The two films share an almost identical premise (one features a truck pursuing a car, the other a car pursuing a truck), and both featured a big television star (David Janssen vs Dennis Weaver). But while Duel is now considered a minor classic, Hijack! is rightly all but forgotten. That’s probably because a young Steven Spielberg directed Duel, while Hijack! was helmed by a TV hack, Leonard Horn, who churned out Sixties genre fodder such as Mission: Impossible and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Or in this case, Voyage to the Bottom of the Barrel.

Still, the film does have some high points. The villains’ wardrobe is fabulous. Their leader – a thick-set, middle aged man – wears an electric pea-green suit that even Elvis in his Las Vegas, coke-snorting and crotch-thrusting heyday would’ve baulked at.

Not to be outdone, his top henchman sports a pair of trousers featuring an eye-bleedingly complex pattern of purples and mauves (perhaps a vain attempt to distract you from the fact he’s as bald as a coot). Clearly, these master criminals were not particularly concerned about remaining incognito.

Exploding helicopter action

Having spent so much time stuck on the highways and byways of Texas, the movie takes a pleasing aerial turn at its climax.

Following several failed attempts to stop Janssen, the villains take to a helicopter to stop the troublesome trucker.

An onboard gunman fires at the lorry with a machinegun, peppering the windshield with bullets. As the vehicle grinds to a halt, it appears that they’ve finally got their man. The helicopter lands so the villains can seize their prize. But wait: Janssen’s not dead! He’s just been lying doggo.

He shifts the truck into gear and rams the parked whirlybird, which instantly explodes. The lorry roars away badly dented, on-fire and with Janssen looking badly shaken by his ordeal – or perhaps just worrying about his no claims bonus.

Artistic merit

It’s often mentioned on this blog that helicopters in Seventies movies were remarkably combustible – the slightest graze could have them erupting into a fireball. And so it is here. While the truck gives the chopper a fair old shunt, there’s no earthly reason for it to violently explode.

Mustn’t grumble though, because it’s not every day you get to see a helicopter blow up after a vehicular game of British Bulldog.

Exploding helicopter innovation

The chopper fireball in Hijack! is unusual, but not unique. Chuck Norris’ trucker tale, Breaker! Breaker!, also sees a is destroyed in similar fashion.

Interesting fact

Despite being a small-screen star, David Janssen has appeared in a surprising number of films with an exploding helicopter. Check out his work in The Green Berets, Birds Of Prey and High Ice.

Review by: Jafo

Terminator: Dark Fate

By this point, “I’ll be back” has started to sound less like a promise and more like a grim cinematic threat.

Imagine, for a moment, walking out of a screening of the original “Terminator” in 1984 and being told that the film’s stars would still be playing those action roles 35 years later.

That a waxen-faced, 72-year-old Arnie Schwarzenegger and a profoundly haggard Linda Hamilton (63) would still be hobbling around in biker leathers, toting over-sized guns and spouting inanities about ‘holes in der fabric of tiiime…’ You’d find the prospect more incredible than the movie you’d just seen.

And yet here we are. It’s 2019, and Arnie is back doing his shtick as everyone’s favourite T-100. To paraphrase Michel Biehn in the original film: “The Terminator franchise is out there. It can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with, and it absolutely will not stop until you are dead (bored of these endless sequels).”

The Case of the Missing Movies

You know how the Terminator movies often end with a knackered-looking robot being slowly lowered into a huge smelting vat? Well, that’s apparently what the makers of Dark Fate decided to do with T3, Salvation and Genisys.

With James Cameron back in the driving seat as producer, this new movie follows directly on from the last half-decent Terminator film – T2: Judgment Day – and unblushingly pretends that nearly three decades’ worth of increasingly confusing sequels simply never happened. (If only the poor audience was afforded the same luxury.)

The plot

But even with such radical surgery, the plot of this movie is still a mess – hurriedly tying up loose ends and conjuring up whole new story arcs with scraps of cranky exposition. It starts with a flashback in which annoying teen, John Connor – the original saviour of the world, remember – is casually killed by a CGI-young Arnie. (In other words, everything that was achieved in the first two movies was a complete waste of time.) The action then clunks over to Mexico, where a new ‘good’ Terminator and obligatory liquid-metal bad guy both arrive in search of the latest saviour, a feisty young auto-worker.

Naturally, within five minutes there’s a Terminator fight and car chase. Linda Hamilton turns up, armed with a massive bazooka and, even more worryingly for the viewer, yet more nigh-unlistenable exposition. Then they all go to visit Arnie, now living incognito as a curtain salesman called Carl. (Yes, you did just read that correctly.) The bad guy finds them again. There’s another fight. Then another, on a plane. Then it’s on to the obligatory climactic fisticuffs in a giant industrial setting. And by this point, the action has essentially morphed – Terminator liquid metal-style – back into the first two movies.

You’ve almost got to admire the studio’s unabashed intent to put on a karaoke-style tribute to the franchise’s glory days, but the result should be more coherent. Apparently, new director Tim Miller and the famously combustible Cameron had radically different ideas for the script and did not get along. Word is they essentially waged a Hollywood jihad on each other as they wrestled for creative control, and you can see the results in the lumpy storytelling and uneven tone.

The cast

However, the studio did manage to muster some innovation with its cast. Showing some serious post-#metoo savvy, they decided to feature three female leads. In theory, this was a good idea. The franchise has had more than its fair share of macho meatheads – Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, the abominable Jai Courtney – so switching chromosomes felt like a fresh and bold move. Unfortunately, all the main roles have been woefully underwritten and the actors themselves are largely terrible.

The ‘good’ Terminator – a genetically enhanced human, this time – is played by gangly-limbed tomboy, Mackenzie Davis, who is great at ass-kicking but otherwise seems totally lost, unsure whether to emote or act tough. Playing the chosen-one-who-mustn’t-be-killed, Hispanic actress Natalia Reyes alternately bleats and wails and gets angry, but all to no discernible purpose. Only Leathery Linda is able to instil her character with a bit of steely resolve, spitting out withering asides and giving everyone the stink-eye.

As always, Big Arnie’s performance seems stuck between acting like a robot and being the robotic actor that he really is. Gabriel Luna does manage to bring a chilling menace to his role as the new bad terminator, but when the actor being singled out for praise only speaks about 30 words in the whole movie and is basically a CGI-composite for 80 per cent of his scenes, that’s pretty telling.

Get to the action, for God’s sake…

Luckily, the film-makers seem to have realised what a load of complete bobbins their story and actors were, so opted to throw a boat-load of action at the screen – and the formula largely works.

Following an opening contretemps in a car factory, the film really gets going with a prolonged (and hugely destructive) giant lorry chase along a freeway. And while, post-Matrix, this kind of scene is becoming a little too familiar, there’s a lot of stunts-and-explosions creativity on display.

Later, the gang somehow find themselves locked up in an immigration holding facility, until Old Liquid Stabby Arms turns up and starts slicing and dicing his way through everybody. (It’s a wonder Trump hasn’t tried to hire him.)

From then on, it’s basically non-stop action. The extended dust-up inside an airborne C-130 is pretty rousing stuff, then it’s a hair-raising fall to earth in a Jeep attached to a wonky parachute, followed by two minutes avoiding soggy murder at the bottom of a lake and a chase across a dam. As mentioned, the climactic battle takes place in a ma-hoosive industrial plant handily equipped with plenty of Terminator-unfriendly materials. In short, it’s a full-on barrage of blows and bullets.

…because it might stop them speaking. 

Exploding Helicopter has witnessed some truly appalling guff during its decade-long existence, but certain talky scenes here might well make the blog’s Mount Rushmore of Terrible Exposition. They are epically, finger-gnawngly bad. In one rambling early scene, where the main players are meant to be establishing themselves while holed up at a motel, you can actually see that chunks of dialogue have been overdubbed in post-production. And in the screening attended by Exploding Helicopter, a couple of Linda’s angry, gun-totin’ “Die, Metal Motherfucker!’ lines were met with open guffaws, which is never a promising sign.

But things truly fall through the floor when Arnold the Reformed T-100 starts waffling on about his wife and kid, and finding ‘ver beauty in hoo-man liiife’. It’s a monstrously misjudged scene, which the Teutonic Timber is not close to being able to deliver. You can almost picture Tim Miller sat behind the camera, head in hands, while Arnie rote-reads his moving soliliquy with all the delicacy and touch of a Speak-Your-Weight machine. It may well be the worst individual scene you’ll see on screen this year.

Exploding helicopter action

Two thirds of the way through the film, our heroes make their way to a military base to collect an incredibly powerful macguffin-I-mean-weapon, handily packaged in a case small enough to qualify as carry-on baggage with RyanAir. But wait: here comes Mr Liquid Metal in a helicopter! Arnie and pals board the tailgate of a lumbering C-130 military plane, and as it takes off they shoot at the pursuing chopper. The evil terminator leaps from his damaged chopper on to the tailgate of the plane, eager for some metallic mayhem. Meanwhile, the now pilotless helicopter explodes, hitting the runway and rolling over multiple times.

Artistic merit

As you might expect in a movie that cost $185 million, everything looks fairly realistic and exciting. But there’s so much other stuff going on during this sequence – speeding vehicles, falling masonry, speeding terminators – that not enough time is devoted to relishing the true glory of the helicopter explosion.

Interesting fact

Terminator: Dark Fate was originally planned as the first offering in a new trilogy. But the cataclysmic box office showing (even the famously undiscerning Chinese audience, so often the saviour of mediocre Hollywood movies, has turned its collective nose up at it) means that it may finally be time for Arnie to say Hasta le Vista, Baby.

The Diamond Mercenaries

The Seventies were a golden era for heist movies. Back then, filmmakers spoiled us with a myriad of variations on the traditional stick-em-up. We had Sam Peckinpah’s gritty The Getaway, George Roy Hill’s stylish caper The Sting, and Sidney Lumet’s moving Dog Day Afternoon.

But naturally, Exploding Helicopter is not reviewing one of those illustrious efforts. Instead, you’ll be getting the lowdown on The Diamond Mercenaries (1976) – almost the very definition of a run-of-the-mill hack-job – which was directed by cinematic journeyman, Val Guest.

The reason for this is fairly simple. It appears that there are good heist movies, and then heist movies with exploding helicopters in them. Like a Great Dane and a Chihuahua, the two entities don’t tend to mix.

The plot

A team of mercenaries plot an audacious raid on a seemingly impregnable diamond mine. But when rumours of the heist reach the owners, they bring in their top security man to foil the raid.

The stage is then set for a battle of wits. Can our merry band of thieves pull off their daring robbery? Or will the sly security chief outfox his prey before they steal the gems?

To find out, you’ll either have to watch the film or keeping reading this review. (Assuredly, both will be a terrible waste of your time, but at least reading this drivel won’t take you an hour and half.)

The cast

Heading the cast – in more ways than one – is the late, great, extremely follically-challenged Telly Savalas, a monumental TV star in the Seventies. (Heck, he was even named after the television.) Known universally for his role as the cue-ball-headed cop, Kojak, Big Tel here plays the security chief tasked with preventing the robbery.

It’s a tricky job, and not made any easier by having to wear an eye-melting selection of garish Seventies shirts. (Exploding Helicopter’s particular favourite is a hallucinogenic emerald green number with, yes, owls splattered all over it.)

Starring alongside our top baldy sex symbol is Sixties counter-culture icon, Peter Fonda, who features as a diamond mine employee charged with infiltrating the gang. The Easy Rider and LSD enthusiast cruises through the film with a blissed-out cool that suggests he might have smuggled a healthy-sized collection of happy pills onto the set. Or perhaps he just stared at Telly’s shirt for too long.

You’ll likely notice a couple of other famous faces among the criminal clique, some more welcome than others. Christopher Lee – everyone’s favourite blood-sucking vampire – pops up as a poetry-reading British soldier gone bad.

And speaking of creepy men who stick sharp objects into young women: everyone’s least favourite acquitted murderer, OJ Simpson, also squeezes in a guest appearance. The “Juice” is famously a very poor actor (he struggled mightily with the role of ‘innocent person’ at his own trial, for example) and he’s on typically bobbins form here. Bleurgh.

A theft of your time

Heist movies have been reliably entertaining audiences for decades, by following a very simple three-point formula.

First, show the team – generally a ragbag assortment of misfits – being brought together. Second, outline the painstaking preparations for the big ‘job’. And third, deliver an exciting finale where the robbery is carried out in all its elaborate detail.

Really, it’s a fool-proof plan. Or at least, it was until director Val Guest started tinkering with it.

So, instead of seeing the gang recruited, the criminal coven in The Diamond Mercenaries comes ready-formed. And their preparations for the job? That involves nothing more than some desultory leaning over a table, looking at a giant map. Compelling drama, this is not.

Mercifully, things do improve once the heist begins – or more precisely, goes completely tits up. Once the raid is rumbled, the last half hour transforms into a veritable action bonanza.

The gang have to shoot their way out of the diamond mine, before making their getaway in a Jeep. This sets-up an exciting desert-set car chase, with each side trading gunfire as vehicles race across the sand dunes.

But this climactic surge of excitement is, frankly, too little too late. Ultimately, The Diamond Mercenaries is no 24-carat sparkler. It is a very dim gem, indeed. Perhaps they should have named it The Diamante Mercenaries.

Exploding helicopter action

All this brings us to what should be the crown jewel of every film: the exploding helicopter. This conflagration actually occurs at the start of the film, during a sequence designed to establish the formidable defences of the diamond mine.

What happens: a couple of criminals are attempting to sneak in, when their presence is detected. Natch, a helicopter (a Bell Jet Ranger, fact fans!) is despatched to investigate.

As the chopper flies overhead, one of the intruders fires a solitary rifle shot at it. And before you can say, “Surely a single small calibre bullet is never going to damage a helicopter…” POOF! The whole thing disappears so magically fast you’ll be looking for David Copperfield’s name in the end credits.

Artistic merit

This singularly underwhelming helicopter explosion is a strong example of a phenomenon that regularly plagued films of this vintage: spontaneous combustion.

You’d think a vehicle robust enough to fly and carry multiple people would be able to absorb a reasonable amount of small-arms fire before being fatally damaged. And yet, during the Seventies, you basically only needed to sneeze in the general direction of a helicopter before it would erupt in flames. They really did seem to explode at the slightest provocation

Presumably, film audiences of that era were simply an impatient bunch and overly eager to get to the bit where everything blew up. And so filmmakers gave ‘em what they wanted. But looking back, maybe someone should have mentioned that anticipation is half the pleasure.

Interesting fact

Obviously, nothing about the movie itself is interesting. But the cast and crew of this yarn do have a spookily high number of connections to the James Bond franchise.

Both Christopher Lee and Maud Adams appeared in The Man With The Golden Gun. Telly Savalas played 007’s cat stroking nemesis Blofeld in On Her Majesties’ Secret Service. And Val Guest was one of the many directors who worked on the Sixties Bond parody Casino Royale.

Eagle-eared listeners will also identify a further connection to the famous British spy series. That’s because the dulcet tones of Robert Rietty can be heard providing the voices for several of the supporting characters. Dubbed ‘the man with a thousand voices’, Rietty memorably voiced Emilio Largo in Thunderball, and Tiger Tanaka in You Only Live Twice, as well as many other minor characters throughout the series.

Review by: Jafo

The Park Is Mine

Remember that time Tommy Lee Jones played an unhinged Vietnam veteran who leads an armed takeover of New York? No, Exploding Helicopter didn’t either.

And little wonder. The Park Is Mine (1986), which was originally made for Canadian TV, is a curious wee turkey. At first glance, this tale of a ‘Nam soldier going on a violent rampage after being pushed too far looks like just another one of the Rambo rip-offs that plagued the Eighties.

But wipe away its camouflage paint-smeared exterior and you’ll find a far, far weirder film. Because in this movie, the loon-eyed shouty guy with a bag of explosives is presented not as a violence-crazed domestic terrorist, but a public folk hero.

And if you’re already confused, there’s bad news on the way: we’ve not even reached the plot yet.

The plot

Take a deep breath, now. Disgruntled Vietnam veteran, Mitch (Tommy Lee Jones), gets a posthumous letter from an old war buddy who’s just committed suicide, containing plans for a paramilitary takeover of New York’s iconic Central Park. The dead pal asks Mitch to commandeer the park in order to, er, highlight the way veterans have been forgotten by society.

So, using a secret weapons cache (natch!), Mitch does exactly that. And when he also fends off a counter-offensive by the NYPD, the public takes to the streets in his support for some reason that is not immediately clear, possibly even to the film’s director.

Humiliated by this scenario, the dastardly NY deputy mayor secretly orders two mercenaries to kill Mitch. But Mitch instead bumps off the mercenaries, then gives himself up to the police.

And that’s it.

At no stage is the question of what the point was of the whole exercise even remotely addressed.

Drama-free zone

This is confusing stuff, certainly, but unfortunately it’s not in the least dramatic. You see, in order to retain the audience’s sympathy, the film refuses to let Mitch actually hurt anyone. Remember, kids: he’s fighting ‘the man’, not individual people.

So incredibly, the grizzled vet effects a wholesale paramilitary takeover of Central Park using nothing more lethal than blank ammunition and smoke bombs. (Exactly how the assembled might of the NYPD fails to notice this is just another baffling element that’s never explained.)

Talking of unsolved mysteries, the film also never really explains quite what Mitch is protesting against or campaigning for. What’s more, he’s only threatening to stay in the park for three days, until Veterans’ Day, so it’s always evident that the whole situation could be peacefully resolved by simply doing nothing.

Heaping confusion onto unlikelihood, the film gradually veers farther and farther away from a realistic scenario. Like one of the fake bombs used in the takeover, it splutters ineffectually before finally fizzling out.

The cast

Tommy Lee Jones was almost 50 before The Fugitive made him ‘Tommy Lee Jones’, the movie star. Before then, the baggy-eyed Texan spent 20 years slogging his way through bit parts and dreck-ish TV movies such as this.

It’s a testament to TLJ’s future greatness that he’s able to at least partially humanise such a thinly written character as Mitch and make him in half-way sympathetic. The only other familiar face the great Yaphet Kotto (Alien, Live And Let Die), playing a policeman drafted in to handle the crisis.

Exploding helicopter action

Speaking of no drama… About halfway through the movie, police snipers in a helicopter are ordered to fly over the park and take out Tommy Lee Jones. Our Rambo-impersonating hero fires at them, but very pointedly only aims only at the chopper’s tail rotor, damaging the whirlybird.

Trailing smoke, the damaged helicopter spins around in the air before making an emergency landing. All the crew jumps out to safety long before the aircraft suddenly combusts.

Artistic merit

While there’s a spectacular fireball to enjoy, its impact is defused by the yawn-worthy staging. The helicopter crew takes an absolute age to safely disembark – you’ll see faster exiting in an episode of On The Buses – and only then can the pyrotechnics supervisor trigger the explosion. And frankly, a stationary and empty helicopter explosion isn’t all that interesting to watch.

Favourite quote

“I have a message for New York. Central Park is mine.”

Review by Jafo

Still want more? Then have a listen to the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode where we review The Park Is Mine. Find us on iTunes, Stitcher, Acast, Spotify and all the usual place.

The Final Countdown

Along with death, taxes and a Meryl Streep Oscar nomination there is one more certainty in the world: mention the words ‘Final’ and ‘Countdown’ to anyone, and they will start humming: “Der-ne-ner-ner, der-ne-NE-NE-ner…”

Thanks to Eighties pop-rockers, Europe, the Final Countdown has become synonymous with poodle perms, tinny synths and a horrific, caterwauling chorus. (Which, be in no doubt, was unquestionably used as audio torture during the darkest days at Gitmo.)

But once upon a time (well, 1980 to be exact), the phrase was perhaps best known as the title of a film with an intriguing time travel premise. So come with Exploding Helicopter, as we spiral backwards through the cinematic time tunnel.

The plot

A present-day American warship is caught in a mysterious electrical storm that sends it spinning back through time to 1941 and – Cor, lummy! – the hours before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

Understandably, the ship’s patriotic captain is all for using the might of his modern-day weaponry to prevent the infamous Japanese attack. But what if – as other conscientious members of his crew point out – this might alter the course of history in unintended and unpredictable ways?

The stage then is set for some classic time-travel speculation about the consequences of America never entering World War II. Would Europe still be under the jackboot of Nazism? Could the hammer and sickle of Soviet Russia now be fluttering over the continent? Most importantly: might any combination of actions have avoided Trump? And if so, is it too late to maybe give them a shot?

The cast

Topping the bill is human dimple Kirk Douglas. The singularly-chinned thespian plays Captain Yelland, the straight-arrowed military man who has to make sense of his crew’s time-travelling travails.

Alongside him is Martin Sheen, whose main role is to sport a magnificent plume of beautifully coiffured hair, of the kind not generally seen outside a show ring at Crufts. When not tossing his lustrous locks from side to side – a move that seemingly leaves him in constant danger of a neck injury – his other job is to butt-heads with Douglas about the consequences of meddling with history.

The rest of the cast is a weirdly eclectic mish-mash of actors. There’s Superfly himself, Ron O’Neal, cult movie impresario Lloyd Kaufman and Asian utility actor Soon-Tek Oh who is cast as (hold on to your seats, folks) a kamikaze crazy Jap.

Revered character actor Charles Durning also has a role as a shady US Senator, which seems fitting as – if anyone knows about being stuck in time – it’s the prematurely aged Chuck, who has spent the majority of his forty-plus year film career playing crusty old codgers.

Is this any good?

On one level, The Final Countdown is a terrific idea. The film’s characters have to grapple with a moral quandary centred on one of the defining moments of World War II. And with the fate of the world at stake, the drama literally couldn’t be higher.

Except. The trouble is, well, we already know how all these events played out. Clearly, everything the characters are worrying about will never come to pass – so there’s no real sense of high stakes, jeopardy nor tension.

Instead, like the aircraft carrier on which the action takes place, the drama chugs slowly and predictably forward across its 100-minute run-time. Ironically for a film about time travel, it feels an awful lot longer.

All told, it’s more the final let-down than countdown.

Exploding helicopter action

In order to prevent the space-time continuum being dangerously damaged, Captain Yelland orders that two characters be left stranded on a deserted island (He reasons that they’ll be rescued later, but not before they can raise the alarm about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour).

The pair are flown out to the isolated outcrop in a helicopter. But when one realises the plan, he grabs a flare gun and threatens the pilot. A struggle breaks out, during which the flare gun goes off, causing the helicopter to explode.

Artistic merit

The chopper fireball is incredibly brief. It’s only on-screen for a couple of seconds before the action cuts away. You can only conclude that they were trying to hide the poverty of their special effects with such a rapid edit.

Exploding helicopter innovation

The Final Countdown is far from the only example of a time-travel exploding helicopter. Biggles: Adventures in Time (1985) and Samurai Command 1549 (2005) both feature helicopters exploding in eras where they did not belong. This movie, though, made in 1980, has the distinction of being the first one to pull off this feat.

Interesting fact

As the copious amount of military hardware onscreen may suggest, The Final Countdown was made with the full co-operation of the American Navy.

So pleased were the Navy with the outcome, they included footage in their recruitment drives. It is unlikely, however, that any film schools felt similarly compelled to use excerpts from the movie to promote the virtues of quality movie-making.

Review by: Jafo

Check out the review of The Final Countdown by our friends Bulletproof Action. 

Sahara

Creating a hit film is easy right?

You take a best-selling novel, hire some big-name actors, sprinkle on a few hundred millions dollars’ worth of special effects and exotic locations…and hey, presto!

This seemingly fool-proof formula has produced some cripplingly bad movies over the years. And right up there, in the very top tier of infamy, sits Sahara (2005).

Few films have failed so magnificently, on such a grand scale, and for such a duration as this cataclysmically terrible piece of cinematic guff. It almost re-wrote the rule book on how spectacularly wrong moviemaking can go. (Time Magazine calculated the studio lost nearly $150 million, making it the fourth most costly failure of all-time.)

Not only was it a box office catastrophe: the film also spawned a famously venal, seven-year legal battle as the author and studio tried to pin the blame on each other. After spanking away an impressive $20m in legal fees, the case collapsed in a legal stalemate without anyone collecting a dollar. Oh, hum.

The plot

Dirk Pitt, an adventurer and naval salvage expert, goes in search of a ship from the American Civil War that went missing while carrying millions in gold.

His hunt takes him to Mali in Africa, which is currently in the middle of its own civil war. Along the way, Pitt falls in with a United Nations doctor who’s trying to find the source of a mystery illness that is killing hundreds of people.

Will Pitt find his missing treasure? Can the good doctor stop the deadly disease? Will anyone be able to explain why an American Civil War ship – you know, one of those things that travels on water – is smack-bang in the middle of the largest, driest landmass on the planet? Don’t count on it.

The cast

Matthew McConaughey plays aquatic adventurer, Dirk Pitt. Today, the Texan drawler is best known for his Oscar-winning dramatic roles – but during the Noughties, he was stuck on a treadmill of dire romantic comedies. Tired of cooing coyly at female co-stars, Sahara was supposedly Buff Matt’s big opportunity to recast himself as an action lead. (His previous attempt, dragon yawn-fest Reign of Fire, had gone up in flames.) But after the film bombed Matty Mac had to starve himself to death in Dallas Buyers Club before Hollywood took him serious as an actor.

Penelope Cruz plays the do-gooding doctor. Despite lauded roles in critically acclaimed European films, Hollywood has only ever used the Spanish siren as exotic eye candy. Here, she does little more than spout exposition, get periodically rescued and maintain immaculately glossy hair.

Bulking out the cast are a pay cheque-collecting William H Macy (hey, those university fees for his daughter don’t pay themselves) and Exploding Helicopter fave, Delroy Lindo. Always a reliable supporting turn, Del Boy has racked up an impressive number of films – Domino, The Last Castle, Broken Arrow – featuring some form of chopper conflagration.

The script 

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but one has to wonder whether Clive Cussler’s blockbuster novels were ever ideal material for a film. Even the books’ biggest fans would concede that their credulity-stretching plots – Atlantis discoveries, Mayan death cults – are bat-shit crazy.

Compounding matters was the notoriously curmudgeonly Cussler himself. Scarred by an earlier, botched adaptation of his work, the novelist demanded – and got – final script approval. Worse, he insisted that all the loopier elements of his story should remain intact.

No less than eight writers tried to make sense of the novelist’s hokum, but curmudgeonly Clive refused to accept any script version that didn’t have every one of his bonkers notions present and correct. Finally, with filming set to commence, the producers simply stopped answering his calls and shot their preferred script. Cue the legal battle…

The director

Given that Sahara was an expensive, effects-laden film, with big-name stars, extensive location shoots, and a dog’s breakfast of a script, the film desperately needed a veteran director.

You know the type: a grizzled tyro who could stride about the set, bullwhip in one hand, megaphone in the other, and knock the thing into shape through sheer force of personality.

So naturally, the directorial reins were handed to first-time – yes, that’s first-time – filmmaker Breck Eisner. Obviously, young Breck won this film-making gig purely on merit. But it probably was nice that he could also get regular visits on set from his dad, Disney head honcho Michael Eisner.

Exploding helicopter action

After locating the missing 150-year-old battleship, McConaughey and company find themselves in a sticky spot when the film’s villain turns up in a helicopter gunship. Scrabbling around inside the rusty vessel, they – let’s say, yes, improbably – find a working onboard cannon.

Boom! The cannonball crashes through the windscreen of the helicopter – and for a moment, it seems as though that’s the only damage it’s going to cause. But then a small fuse burns down and the iron projectile detonates.

Artistic merit

This scene is really the only reason to watch this film. That, and Penelope Cruz’s immaculately maintained glossy hair.

Exploding helicopter innovation

It goes without saying that you don’t often see helicopters destroyed by 19th century weaponry. Certainly, this is the only time a whirlybird has been blown up with a cannon.

Interesting fact

Sahara wasn’t Hollywood’s first disastrous attempt to bring Dirk Pitt to the big screen.

In 1980, media mogul Sir Lew Grade splurged millions on the soggy sea adventure Raise The Titanic, which sank faster at the box office than did the titular ship.  Later, the uber-producer wryly observed that rather than Raise The Titanic it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic.

Review by: Jafo

Still want more? Then check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on Sahara. You can listen via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher or right here and now...

Hitman: Agent 47

How do you make a movie based on a computer game seem authentic?

That was the problem facing the creative geniuses behind Hitman: Agent 47 (2015). But after much scratching of heads (and very probably some industrial-level coke consumption), they hit upon an ingenious, albeit counter-intuitive, solution.

Why not take the glaring limitations of computer games – two-dimensional characters, hopelessly complicated storylines and no real emotional involvement – and instil those very qualities into the film itself?

The result is Hitman: Agent 47 – a movie it can feel uncomfortable to watch without a PlayStation controller in your hand.

The plot

Our protagonist is ‘47’, a genetically enhanced super-soldier or ‘agent’, created as part of a now defunct Government experiment. He’s out to stop a shadowy group called The Syndicate, who (natch) want to revive the Agent programme for their own nefarious purposes.

As is very often the case in such movies, there’s a reluctant, beardy scientist (named Litvenko) who’s now rueful of the destructive programme he created and so has gone on the run. That means both sides are Looking for Litvenko, which sounds like a middling Russian rom-com and might actually have made for a more interesting movie.

The hunt leads to the missing boffin’s daughter, who is also trying to track down her errant father. Inevitably, Baldy ’47 and the chick team up. Can they find the secretive scientist before the sinister Syndicate? Will they be able to prevent the reboot of the agent programme? And do you get 10,000 bonus points for shooting two baddies with a single bullet? (Sorry, we forgot this isn’t a game for a moment.)

The cast

The titular hero is played by Rupert Friend (taking over from Timothy Olyphant who played the cue ball-headed assassin in the previous film). Although not nearly so robo-handsome as Tim, Rupert is fine in the role – but then again, this this has to be the easiest thesping gig on the planet. As a genetic kill-machine, Agent 47 is utterly incapable of expressing any sense of character, nuance or emotion. Looking back, it’s a miracle Keanu Reeves wasn’t bagged for the role.

Taking on the villain role is the slightly other-worldly Zachary Quinto, best known for playing Spock in the Star Trek re-boot movies. Now, Quinto is very much an odd bird. There’s such a strange, alien quality to his performance that it’s like watching a Vulcan straining a little too hard to play a human. Still, his peculiar nature is weirdly suited to this video game movie, and he proves an interesting antagonist for Friend to butt heads – and fists, and feet, and bullets, and blades – with.

Rounding out the cast is Ciarin Hinds, playing the much sought-after beardy scientist. As a seasoned veteran of many genuinely good films – Munich, There Will Be Blood etc – Big C clearly had mortgage payments in mind when taking this job, and his post-it-in performance reflects that.

It's not all bad

Any bozo could tell that this movie is based on a computer game. The endless scenes of frantic running and shooting – a smorgasbord of unrelenting action – carry all the hallmarks of a typical first-person shoot-em-up game.

So on the surface, this obviously does meet the standards of a truly terrible movie. And certainly, the critics who pilloried its arrival in cinemas thought as much. (“Uniquely boring”, “an idiotic mess” and “utterly banal” were among the warmer verdicts.) But actually – and whisper this gently, dear reader – Exploding Helicopter quite enjoyed it.

For all its myriad flaws, the film has a number of deftly choreographed action set-pieces (an escape from an underground car park, and a subway chase are particular highlights), and the imaginative locations lend the movie the superior gloss of a Bond film.

There’s also a neat plot switcheroo at the end of the first act. And oddly, there are even a couple of decently written scenes that give the characters a smattering more depth than the usual paddling pool dimensions found in similar fare.

Overall, there is a freshness to the fromage on display here. And so long as your expectations are properly calibrated, this is not a difficult film to enjoy.

Exploding helicopter action

Despite the despairing efforts of 47, the film’s denouement sees the Syndicate capture Litvenko. They spirit him away on board a helicopter as our follically-challenged assassin looks on.

However, there’s a surprise in store for the villain. As he revels in his success, Litvenko – who the film has already established is suffering from a lung condition – triggers an explosive he’s hidden inside his ever-present inhaler. Kaboom! The helicopter explodes. What a cunning wheeze!

Artistic merit

In an interesting twist on the usual chopper fireball scene, the helicopter crumples inwards as it explodes. Burning wreckage, illuminated against the night sky, then artfully falls towards the ground. Nice.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Unsurprisingly, this is almost certainly the first time a cinematic helicopter has been destroyed by an asthma inhaler.

Tagline

“Your number’s up.” Geddit? Not that there’s really that much to get.

Review by: Jafo

Hard Ticket To Hawaii

B-movies have a long and - let’s be honest - not terribly noble Hollywood history.

Invariably cheaply produced, these films endeavour to make up for what they lack in big name stars, expensive sets and well-crafted drama by giving audiences plenty of ‘good bits’ (ie: sex and violence)

Many enterprising filmmakers, from Roger Corman to Russ Meyer, have made a lucrative living by following a simple formula – rustle up any old guff, but remember to throw in enough breasts, punch-ups and explosions to keep audiences distracted. Then in the Eighties, maverick moviemaker Andy Sidaris ramped up the stakes by re-inventing the genre.

His films concentrated on giving the audience three simple pleasures: bullets, bombs and babes. And so was born the ‘triple B’ or ‘BBB’ movie.

The plot

On a remote Hawaiian island, two undercover government agents accidentally stumble upon a diamond smuggling operation and confiscate the contraband.

Unsurprisingly, the local criminal kingpin is not best pleased and sends his heavies to retrieve the sparkles before police reinforcements arrive.

Meanwhile, in a sub-plot seemingly unrelated to the rest of the film (and totally unrelated to any notion of credibility), a radioactive killer snake – yes, you read that right – is loose on the island. The wee guy pops up in an early scene then slithers away for over an hour, emerging only at the denouement (from a toilet, naturally) to bite the baddie.

So, can our heroes slap cuffs on the crook before they’re killed off? What say might the sinister serpent have in proceedings? And most importantly, will the viewer get to gorge on plenty of guns, girls and good bits? You bet.

Exploiting the exploitation genre

So, who was Andy Sidaris? For many years, he was an award-winning sports television director, covering everything from the Olympics to American football. Famously, he pioneered the ‘honey shot’, the now ubiquitous cutaway to an attractive woman in the crowd.

But Andy ultimately grew tired of sports and relaunched himself as a DIY filmmaker, self-producing a dozen straight-to-video films during the Eighties and Nineties. His signature ‘BBB’ formula is literally all over the screen in Hard Ticket To Hawaii, which is chock full of gun battles, blow-ups and blown-up breasts.

As writer, director and producer (and probably chief bottle washer) on his movies, Sidaris had no-one to stop him indulging the wackier elements of his imagination. For example: he liked to fill his movies with beefcake guys and buxom dames. So what if they couldn’t really act? That’s what he wanted, goddammit!

He was also known for putting together notably bonkers action scenes. In this movie, our heroes fight-off a skateboarding-riding assassin before using a bazooka to blow up a sex doll. Then they decapitate someone with an explosive frisbee. You don’t get that in a Chuck Norris movie.

But what about the babes?

Here too, Hard Ticket To Hawaii delivers. All the leading ladies in the film are played by Playboy playmates (March 1984, May 1984, July 1985, and October 1985, for you vintage pornography fans out there). They may not be the greatest actors in the world, but you can’t fault the other *ahem* assets they bring to the production.

And the funny thing is, it all kind of works. No-one is ever going to mistake this movie for high art, but it does make for a rollicking piece of entertainment. If you’re looking for a film with plenty of ‘good bits’, you won’t go wrong with this.

Exploding helicopter action

Talking of good bits, what of the exploding helicopter action? Fittingly, it combines both a babe and a bazooka.

As the action nears its end, a couple of villains attempt to escape in a helicopter. Exchanging gunfire with our heroes as the chopper lifts-off, it looks like the baddies may make a successful getaway. But wait! One of our undercover cuties has brought along a bazooka.

Dressed only in a skimpy bikini, she lines up the whirlybird in her sights and blows the helicopter out of the sky.

Artistic merit

The method and execution of this chopper fireball is very standard, but Exploding Helicopter did derive an unexpected amount of pleasure from the sight of a beautiful, buxom woman, brandishing a bazooka. One to raise at the next therapy session…

Tagline

To get to paradise, they’ll have to go through hell.

Review by Jafo

Still want more? Then check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode about Hard Ticket To Hawaii. Listen via iTunes, Acast, Stitcher, Spotify and all good podcatchers.

Furious 7

The rise and fall of a film franchise used to be predictable.

They’d begin with a box office smash that left giddy audiences clamouring for more.

This would be followed by a slew of sequels that would steadily decline in quality until the now sorry saga would be killed off. (Or, in these creativity-free days, rebooted a few years later.)

It’s a cycle we’ve seen repeated hundreds of times. (And that’s just the Spider-Man series.) But every rule has an exception.

For one franchise that has defiantly bucked this tried and tested trajectory. One series started indifferently, got much, much worse, then unexpectedly transformed itself into one of the most successful franchises around.

Ladies and gentlemen: Exploding Helicopter gives you the Fast & Furious films.

The plot

Movie number seven opens on an optimistic note for the Fast and Furious gang. After being granted amnesty for their crimes at the end of the previous film, life seems surprisingly quiet.

But the opening titles have barely finished before any sense of tranquility is unceremoniously mowed down, then crunchingly reversed over again. It turns out that Deckard Shaw - the brother of the villain they stopped in instalment six – wants revenge and begins to hunt Vin Diesel and his homies down.

Enter Mr Nobody, the mysterious head of a government covert ops unit. He offers to help Big Vin stop Shaw, but only if he- ah, here we go – steals a high-tech McGuffin (copyright: every action movie ever) that’s about to fall into the hands of terrorists.

What follows is a game of cat and mouse (or, more accurately, car and mouse) as each side competes to complete their mission.

Could this be the end of the road for Vin and his crew? No. Or will he and his chums get to drive off into the sunset and a potential endless stream of sequels? A resounding yes. Will there be a folksy, aw shucks end scene featuring the heroes, complete with a toe-curling speech about ‘family’. You betcha.

The cast

Once again, the cast is headed-up – both literally and physically – by the follically-challenged double act of Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson. Stood together, they resemble a pair of well-trimmed testicles from an LA porno flick.

And lest viewers were unsatisfied by the number of muscular bald men onscreen, chrome-domed action star Jason Statham joins the cast in the role of Deckard Shaw.

Also making his debut is Kurt Russell as Mr Nobody, the shadowy government agent who gives the gang their mission.

Rounding-out the ensemble are returning favourites Michelle Rodriguez, Paul Walker, and, erm, the other ones (who, apart from the Fast & Furious films, mercifully don’t tend to trouble cinemagoers too much with their ‘acting’. We’re looking at you Tyrese...).

Long and winding road to success

When Furious 7 became one of the highest grossing films of all-time (appropriately it’s seventh on the top movie list) it capped a remarkable transformation for the franchise.

This franchise may be an action movie behemoth today, but it’s easy to forget that the first Fast and Furious film was only a moderate hit. Despite being instantly forgettable, it somehow did enough business to spawn two predictably awful sequels (Even Big Vin, hardly the most astute judge of a script, considered them beneath his questionable talents and declined to appear).

However, after the third film Tokyo Drifted (geddit) in and out of cinemas the whole enterprise looked to be heading for the cinematic scrapheap. It was only after the unlikely appearance of a fourth film that producers finally hit upon a winning formula.

Dwayne Johnson: Magic ingredient

The street-racing plot lines were abandoned, with the focus moved to elaborate heists featuring over-the-top vehicular action. And the cast was rejigged with a ‘greatest hits’ of characters assembled from the previous instalments (Vin Diesel and Paul Walker were brought back to lead proceedings).

And then, in the fifth film, they added a magic ingredient: Dwayne Johnson.

The introduction of the The Rock added a new dynamic – not to mention some badly needed charisma – into proceedings. An unexpected critical and commercial hit, Fast Five (2009) made almost as much in ticket sales as the first three films put together.

Since then the series has powered on, becoming a global phenomenon at a point when most franchises are being handed a revolver and told to take a long walk in the woods.

Exploding helicopter action

Like every aspect of Furious 7, the exploding helicopter sequence is spectacularly convoluted. For the sake of brevity, let’s cut it down to the basics.

Having stolen the McGuffin, our heroes find themselves pursued by a heavily armed attack helicopter.

Seeing his friends in trouble, Vin Diesel jumps into a car and drives at high speed off the roof of a multi-story car park.

Vin and his vehicle corkscrew towards the airborne whirlybird as if trying to ram it from the sky. Unfortunately, the car only clips the chopper, and it seems the aircraft has escaped. But wait!

Remember that bag of grenades we saw a few minutes earlier? Well, they’re now hanging beneath the helicopter’s fuselage. (Big Vin having cleverly hooked them to the whirlybird as he whizzed past).
Before you can shout, “that’s convenient foreshadowing”, The Rock fires a pistol at the explosives causing them and the chopper to explode.

Artistic merit

A truly bravura exploding helicopter.

Like one of those giant domino displays, this chopper fireball requires a torturously elaborate sequence of events to happen in exactly the right order.

Unlikely it may be, but you cannot help but applaud the ingenuity.

Interesting fact

Vin Diesel loves a franchise. The big lunk has appeared in 29 films and more than half – 16 to be exact – are related to franchises. And with Fast & Furious 9 and 10, XXX 4 and another Riddick sequel still to come, it’s a number that’s only set to increase. Just call him Mr Original.

Review by: Jafo