In Firefox, Clint Eastwood, in a bold change of pace, plays a renegade computer programmer who invents a new web browser that quickly becomes popular, making him rich.
Sound dull? Unfathomably, the real Firefox, in which Eastwood (also directing) plays a burned-out pilot tasked with stealing “the most sophisticated warplane on the face of this earth,” is rarely more interesting. Well, at least it gives us another entertainingly eccentric performance from Freddie Jones (The Elephant Man) on which to chew.
There’s more than a whiff of the lackluster from the start, when Eastwood suffers what appears to be flashbacks to a stock-footage festival he attended while fighting in Vietnam. This debilitating dread, played up as a great demon he must constantly battle, manifests itself mainly through Eastwood sweating and dramatically pausing when he shouldn’t as he goes undercover in Russia. Fully two-thirds of a movie ostensibly about one kick-ass piece of weaponry is bequeathed to a lethargic spy thriller rife with bad accents, dull dialogue and rather unpleasant jingoism.
All this could be forgiven, perhaps, if the main attraction were at all interesting, but even here, despite some really neat effects work by John Dykstra (Star Wars), the plane is ultimately a letdown. For a film built around the concept of “the greatest warplane ever built … a Mach Five aircraft with thought-controlled weapons systems,” the filmmakers do precious little to make it seem unique.
It looks cool, sure, but after a wearing hour and a half of setup, finally arriving at the “Let’s see what this baby can do!” point, I expect a tad more from an action thriller than a half-hour of cruising altitude and refueling while Soviet generals argue with each other over where the plane might be. And when there is finally some bloody action in a long-promised dogfight the likes of which we presumably have never seen … we’ve seen it before, and better, and longer.
In film, there’s Eastwood classic (Unforgiven) and Eastwood junk (Pink Cadillac). Firefox, all buildup and no payoff, is Eastwood meh. —Corey Redekop
Much of the blame of the boring first part comes from the horrible book by Craig Thomas.
The movie is a faithful adaption of the novel and the problem is that Craig Thomas was a horrible writer. He was boring even in the flying parts.
at least the Film Director is able to make the second half exciting.