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Fire Birds (1990)

Rate: 3
Viewed: 5/25

FireBirds
5/25: George Bush said the following on September 5, 1989:

"Our message to the drug cartels is this: The rules have changed. We will help any government that wants our help. When requested, we will for the first time make available the appropriate resources of America's Armed Forces."

It ultimately didn't work. Enter Fire Birds. The goal is to show everybody how to do it as outlined in Bush's message. Well, I didn't see anything of that sort but helicopters doing fancy stuff. Along the way, we have Nicolas Cage screaming, "I am the greatest!" over and over during flight simulation. Not exactly the winning attitude of a team player in the U.S. Army.

Another that has me confused is the eye dominance thing. Yeah, I get it...a lot of people throw right, and the rest throw left. By following the same analogy when it comes to the monocle, why not uh...have helmets equipped with it on the left side instead of kicking pilots out of the Apache program after spending millions of dollars to train them? I'm sure it's a simple adjustment.

In many ways, Fire Birds feels like a rip-off of Top Gun. The oddest part is seeing so few people: Nicolas Cage and his partner (whoever the hell he is), Tommy Lee Jones, and Sean Young. This is the entire team going into the battle against drug cartels, huh? The editing in the last fifteen minutes is so awful that I didn't realize Tommy Lee Jones' character had been downed at some point.

All in all, Fire Birds is lucky to have Nicolas Cage and Tommy Lee Jones aboard in order to be slightly noticeable.