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A Forties film set in the Seventies and released in the Nineties, no more fitting way to cap the Eighties obsession with doing Vietnam over. Adroit warriors are wasted on nugatory targets, one gets killed during a routine run, his partner (Brad Johnson) plans a payback mission. "When people die, they're just gone," a note from Only Angels Have Wings courtesy of the irascible skipper (Danny Glover), grieving means a Tennyson quote aboard the naval carrier. Johnson's fuzzy resemblance to Tom Berenger suggests a reflection of Platoon, and there's Willem Dafoe pausing for a moment to fill his lungs with warship air. "I like to fight," as good a reason as any for a bombardier to embark on his third tour of duty, and to join the vengeful jock on a blitzkrieg of Hanoi. "Fighter-pukes make movies. Bomber pilots make history." John Milius adding undue melancholia to flyboy propaganda, almost as poignantly outdated in its confused imperialism as Lean's A Passage to India. The red-light district comes with nightly brawls and a crocodile pit, the Navy widow (Rosanna Arquette) supplies a token grain of sensibility in a bellicose world. "A couple of snake eyes in the middle of party headquarters" is the gambit, the missile depot in People's Resistance Park is visualized with miniatures like a Toho maquette, the wingmen warble "Downtown" while soaring over voluptuous fireballs. Through a court-martial it passes to arrive at a sacrificial jungle rescue. "This war's become very confusing. Nobody wants to fight in it. Nobody seems to want to win it." The deflationary analysis of Hot Shots! is serendipitously concurrent. With Tom Sizemore, J. Kenneth Campbell, Jared Chandler, Dann Florek, Ving Rhames, Christopher Rich, John Corbett, Madison Mason, Fred Dalton Thompson, and David Schwimmer.
--- Fernando F. Croce |