After his fighter pilot father is captured by an authoritarian regime, teen prodigy Doug Masters (Jason Gedrick) recruits veteran Chappie Sinclair (Louis Gossett Jr) to help him plot an unsanctioned rescue mission.
Released the same year as Top Gun, Iron Eagle was quickly eclipsed - even though, at the time, it beat its famous rival to a franchise - with three sequels released within a decade.
Comparing it with the Tom Cruise blockbuster offers a perfect example of the power of filmmaking.
Top Gun has been called an advertisement for the Navy - that is because it succeeds in its aims as a movie.
It has an appealing cast, it looks amazing and it has a great soundtrack.
I am not a fan but it is so much better than Iron Eagle.
While Top Gun has the architecture of a sports movie, Iron Eagle is a mishmash of teen fantasy and action thriller.
It is a fundamentally silly proposition - its politics are simplistic (there are references to the failed hostage rescue in Iran, and one character says things are diff now because Reagan is president).
All that would be fine if the movie around it had any flare.
The aerial footage is fine, but it is not shot or cut in a way that feels like coherent action. It shows how hard it is to capture airplanes in flight. The film boasts a soundtrack, but I cannot remember a single song.
The young cast are not terrible, but they are let down by the script.
The portrayal of our young heroes’ friends is excruciatingly corny.
There is nothing organic or (intentionally) funny about their interactions.
You can feel the middle-aged screenwriters behind every ham-fisted attempt at showing the specificity of their relationship dynamics (their fake-out before their final reunion is embarrassing).
The key issue with the film is a complete lack of stakes. The film takes way too long to get going, and there is no sense of peril to the mission preparations, as everyone on the military base seems to agree with Doug that they should ignore the powers-that-be (and international law) to rescue his dad.
The film’s highlight is Louis Gossett Jr as Doug’s reluctant mentor. He is so good he manages to make the movie feel bigger than it is.
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