Customer Reviews

Firehawk [VHS]

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FIREHAWK (1992) Directed by Cirio Santiago.

Starring a whole buch of people you have never seen before and will never see again. Though one cast member Matt Salinger is apparently the spawn of J. D. Salinger.

Sometime during the Vietnam War---no year is given---a medivac helicopter crashes while on a rescue mission but GAZOOKS it appears the chopper was sabotaged. WHO WAS IT? The former Vietcong soldier? The Black pacifist? The pot smoking hispanic? OR the gung ho blond vaguely nordic looking patriotic white pilot who wants to win the war???

I will never tell. An atomic bomb gets tossed into the mix and, while amazingly the Reds are portrayed as the rat bastards they were, the film attempts to placate the Liberals in the audience by its portrayal of the top brass as being corrupt and Patriotic Americans as being cruel and murderous. Oddly enough the Southern cracker in the film--played by Salinger--is redeemed at the end.

Technically the film is not especially good. Mexico doubles for Vietnam and is less convincing than those old jungle sets from the Tarzan movies. The acting is mostly gruesome. In spite of the year the film was made, this is very much a 80s film in that the Vietcong cannot hit the side of a barn from the inside with an RPG while American soldiers do not even have to aim for all of their bullets to hit their intended targets.

Not hideous. Not especially good. The film is not the pornography of say...FULL METAL JACKET, COMING HOME or UNDER HEAVY FIRE so there is that. But this is also not something one should seek out...or flee from either. If you stumble across it at 3 in the morning and you have a case of beer, you could do worse.

Oh and CATCHER IN THE RYE sucks so there.

Here's an unexpected gem that has a very tense plot, where the audience must guess who the traitor is amongst a group of downed soldiers in 'Nam. I thought the acting was good, the dialogue and story excellent, but the production value was just fair (especially with regards to battle scenes). However, I do recommend this picture. Kudos to the story people and the script writer.