User Reviews

I won't recap. Others have already done that.

The Sci Fi channel often has really, really bad stuff. "Falcon Down" is only half bad.

Having some competent actors is a plus. Cliff Robertson is clearly over the hill, but Captain Kirk is in fine fettle. And Judd Nelson does his usual competent job.

And having a couple of very attractive, hot women on board is always a definite plus, even if they are a little over the hill to be labeled "babes." (I know, that's not PC.)

Now the parts I don't understand near the end: If the mini-sub is tethered to the big sub (with no release mechanism? com' on), and it's clamped to the Falcon, how does the mini-sub free itself and yet the big sub remains attached to the Falcon?

And, since the Falcon crushes at 300 ft (I don't think any airplane is built like that), and the sub at 1200, how does the plane drag the sub down to the sub's crush depth? The Falcon is crushed, so it weighs no more than when the Chinese sub planned to tow it.

Why would the Baltimore PD arrest someone trying to interview the Chinese ambassador? It's not like the CIA was stealing the Falcon. I like a good (fictional) conspiracy as much as the next guy, but this makes no sense whatsoever.

But it was only half-bad.

We start with a couple of fighter pilots, flying some sort of "secret" mission. You know right away what kind of movie this is going to be because these guys act as completely unprofessional as possible. Imagine a couple of teenagers let loose in a pair of jet fighters, just screwin' around, having fun, as William Shatner relays orders over the radio (which they ignore). Well, because they're such idiots, they wander into the test area of some new weapon (Shatner reminded them of this about ten times, but of course...). Anyhow, one of them gets shot down by some sort of microwave weapon, which causes the usual silly looking electrocution effect to dance all over the plane. The other pilot is really upset, he thought you could just play around with high tech military gadgetry like some little kid in a toy shop, and nobody would get hurt. He's doesn't think it's fair! Anyhow, he gets - rightfully - discharged from the Air Force.

Now we skip to some Area 51 UFO footage, this is the footage that will blow the whole conspiracy wide open, we're told. The really comical thing is that this footage is so OBVIOUSLY fake, computer generated special effects. I don't even know what this crap had to do with the rest of the movie.

Anyhow, they eventually have to get the disgraced fighter pilot to steal some airplane that contains the microwave weapon before it's sold to the Chinese. For some reason, they keep talking about this weapon as if it's some sort of doomsday machine, which just adds to the stupidity. The acting isn't too terrible, it's just dull. As always with these B-movies, the fighter pilot was the greatest the world has ever seen, he flew SR-71's (kind of funny because considering his maturity level, he wouldn't be allowed in the same hanger with an SR-71, but whatever). At one point he asks why they want him instead of any of the other 1,000 guys who HAVEN'T been drummed out of the Air Force - William Shatner does his best serious voice and says "Because, it's a standard cliché in these sorts of movies. Where have you been?" Well, okay, I made that up, but you've got to chuckle at a movie that goes the extra mile to make its plot holes even more glaringly obvious than they were in the first place.

Jennifer Rubin shows up and looks sexy, that's about the best part of the movie. Otherwise it's just standard low budget silliness with a convoluted plot, some nutty conspiracy theorists we keep seeing on videotape confession segments, characters you'll forget by the time the first credit rolls, and enough plot holes to create quite a little comedy of errors. If you're a B-movie fan and looking for something to rent on a really dull evening, this might fit the bill.

Why was this on the Sci-fi Channel last night? Other than some off-putting babbling of a conspiracy theorist regarding aliens there was no mention of sci-fi themes at all. That theorist plot was plot c. Plot b, the love story of Midkiff and the blonde girlfriend who with her little girl leaves him before the 1st hour is over (having clearly giving up on getting more out of the relationship) was so annoying as the two had no real chemistry.

Main plot was even more annoying with clichéd characters and big laspses in reality. Not one bullet touches "Rat" in the long, long shootout in the hangar sequence. No alarms around the electric fence, and no barb wire at the fence before the hanger holding the craft. Stupid and BORING. Only the presence of Shatner and Judd Nelson salvages this mess and makes me grant it a 4; it certainly isn't the writing.

I tuned into FALCON DOWN looking for some hot supersonic action, but what I got was a very talkative and very little action STV picture about a guy (familiar TV face Dale Midkiff) who at the government's urging helps to steal a new stealth-type bomber, only to find himself double- and triple-crossed when some bad guys plan to sell the thing to the Chinese. Jennifer Rubin, Whilliam Shatner and Judd Nelson are along for the ride. Well, actually, Shatner stands in one place in an ill-defined military office and talks to Midkiff on and off throughout the movie. I thought maybe when the aircraft crash-landed on an Arctic ice floe and then ended up underwater, something might finally happen, but very little actually does. Stick with STEALTH with Josh Brolin or that neat little high-flying knockoff of DIE HARD, 1992's INTERCEPTOR with Andrew Divoff.

Everybody went slumming for paychecks in this amateurish "Firefox" clone. The surprising thing is that writer & director Phillip J. Roth and his three scenarists, Jonathan Raymond, Jon Meyer, and Terri Neish, weren't sued for copyright infringement. "Falcon Down" appropriates the plot of Clint Eastwood's "Firefox" and part of the plot of "Firefox" novelist Craig Thomas' sequel "Firefox Down." Watching this improbable aerial thriller once must have convinced the "Firefox" people to forego any lawsuit. "Falcon Down" is abysmal from take-off to landing and wastes the talents of Cliff Robertson, William Shatner, and Judd Nelson. The opening credits are enough to turn you off as we watch a scanner locate different parts of the Earth and then watch as the names of cast and crew emerge for what seems forever. The special effects just barely make the grade, probably because the jets are filmed against night skies. A perfunctory romance between leading man Dale Midkiff and soap opera beauty queen Sandra Ferguson barely heats up.

"Falcon Down" opens with insubordinate Captain Hank Thomas (Dale Midkiff of CBS-TV's "The Magnificent Seven") and Captain Bobby Edwards (Ken Olandt of "Digital Man") flying at night. They disobey their superior officer, Major Robert Carson (William Shatner of "Star Trek") and enter forbidden airspace. No sooner have they trespassed than some inexplicable force blinds Captain Edwards and his jetfighter crashes. Not long afterward a 747 encounters the same effect, similar to electrocution, with rays wriggled all over the aircraft fuselage before it crashes and 200 people perish. When Thomas demands to know what happened to Edwards, Major Carson refuses to divulge any details and brings Thomas up on court-martial charges. Three years later, after the Air Force has dishonorably discharged him, Thomas is working with his father, Buzz Thomas (Cliff Robertson of "633 Squadron"), who has gone into debt and needs $200-thousand to bail him out. Thomas' nemesis from yesteryear shows up and makes our protagonist an offer that he cannot refuse. It seems that a top secret supersonic jet--the Falcon--with a special combat weapons system needs to be stolen and Carson is shelling out the cash. He represents a group of C.I.A agents, including Sharon (Jennifer Rubin) and Harold Peters (Judd Nelson), who need to steal it. Thomas is such an idiot that he believes them. They break into the plant and steal the jet. When U.S. Air Force interceptors scramble and come after them, Peters activates the micro-wave weapon and starts knocking them off. During the aerial firefight, the Falcon takes a bullet in its wing tank and starts losing fuel. Thomas crash lands the jet on the ice cap while a Red Chinese sub with Major Carson on board cruises underwater toward them for a rendezvous. Unfortunately, for the villains, the plane sinks with the pilots and the traitors on board. The Red Chinese had planned on towing the jet underwater back to their base, but efforts to tow the plane fail and it drags the sub down to destruction.

If this plot synopsis makes "Falcon Down" sound provocative enough to watch, look out! Director Phillip Roth never generates any suspense and the dialogue is as forgettable as the plot is preposterous. Roth appears to have cloned some of the imagery from "Firefox," such as the shot where the jet wheels out of the hanger before take-off. Jennifer Rubin keeps her clothes on the entire time and adds nothing to the plot. Dale Midkiff looks hopeless as a so-called 'ladies man' in a movie that went straight to video and has nothing to distinguish it. Dull, dull, dull! I bought my DVD copy of "Falcon Down" for $2.00 plus tax from Movie Gallery during a discount sale. If I had known how egregious this pseudo-thriller was, I'd have put it back on the shelf.

Captain Hank Thomas (Midkiff) is a former Air Force pilot who now works with his father Buzz (Robertson) at a small, family-run airplane hangar. Thomas's quiet life is disrupted when the mysterious Harold Peters (Nelson) and Sharon Williams (Rubin) approach him. They tell him they need his expert flying skills so they can steal the Falcon, a high-tech plane. Once Major Robert Carson (Shatner) becomes involved, things get really serious.

Now roped into a crazy plan with a bunch of mercenary-types, such as Rat (Kiely), Thomas has no choice but to fly the Falcon and land it on a sheet of ice, so it can eventually be sold to the Chinese government for ten billion dollars. As if all that wasn't enough, apparently there's a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top involving Area 51 and government a cover-up (what else is new?) - will Thomas live to eat beef jerky with his stepdaughter Alisia (Roth) again? Or will the FALCON go DOWN?

Falcon Down stars William Shatner, who you may remember from Land of the Free (1998) and some other stuff that we can't quite remember right now. Thankfully, he's at his William Shatneriest here in Falcon Down, as he delivers just about every line in that herky-jerky style we all know and love. Impressively, he manages to do that even if he's only saying one word. At the important scene when he and the other members of "The Company" are trying to intimidate Midkiff into signing on to their mission, Shatner stands next to a lamp so he's in very dramatic lighting. That was a movie highlight.

In that hotel room scene, it was quite something to see Judd Nelson, William Shatner, Jennifer Rubin, and Dale Midkiff all together in one small room. Have any of them given interviews as to what it was like to be there? Oh, to be a fly on the wall.

While Dale Midkiff did his best, if he wasn't available, the filmmakers could have gotten Randall Batinkoff. And let's not forget William Zabka is on board here too. We would have liked more Zabka. More Zabka is always better than less Zabka. Both he and Jennifer Rubin shoot their handguns sideways, "gangsta" style, which was funny. When they did that, the movie perked up.

Unfortunately, there are long stretches of the movie with no Shatner. Those gaps are filled with stupid moments, dumb dialogue, boring plane sloggery, and a whole lot of nothin'. When Shatner eventually returns, he's on a flight deck of some sort with an Asian man who looks a lot like Sulu. Coincidence?

It's not all bad, however. Nelson does his best, or at least somewhere close to his best, there's an amusing warehouse shootout involving the Rat character, and we get a rare double We Got Company. Usually it's said once by one character. Here it's said twice in quick succession by two characters.

What Falcon Down should have done is concentrate more on the Area 51/Conspiracy angle than it does. It starts and ends with these "videotaped" segments that seem straight out of a show like Unsealed: Alien Files or Unsealed: Conspiracy Files. While those shows are trying to get the truth out there, it's not their fault they're on a low budget. But those more intriguing elements are not really expounded upon or capitalized upon. That's a shame, because an X-Files-esque knockoff starring Shatner, Judd Nelson, Cliff Robertson, and William Zabka is a really cool idea. But that's more or less brushed aside, sadly.

Falcon Down is a telefilm produced by City Heat Productions, a company associated with Blockbuster Video, so you can be assured that multiple copies were always available at your local branch. Another production company was the Unified Film Organization, or UFO. Coincidence?

Despite its strong cast and a smidgen of decent ideas, Falcon Down is filled with too much mush to be really exciting or interesting. It was a close call, though. In the end, it's really more of a flyover in all of our lives.