Cheap Iron Eagle (DVD) (Louis Gossett Jr., Jason Gedrick) (Sidney J. Furie) Price

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Customer Reviews of Iron Eagle

Inferior but unforgettable air war flick
Jason Gedrick is Doug Masters, teen-pilot ace, son of a USAF fighter pilot, AF academy hopeful and high-school failure. Doug is normally not that responsible a kid (mostly when tooling around in low-level air races in the family Cessna), but is forced to mature when his father is shot down and taken prisoner over an unnamed mideastern country. A naturally gifted pilot, Doug has managed to cajole his father into taking him on some practice flights in the past, as well as worming his way into the base's F-16 simulator. Now with the help of "Chappy" Sinclair (Louis Gosset Jr.), a crusty but not rusty reserve fighter pilot, and some of Doug's friends - a click of army-brat and aviation enthusiast-teens who populate the unnamed desert air force base where Doug's father stages - the younger Masters plans an impossible rescue. Together with Chappie, Doug seizes a pair of twin-seat F-16's, loads them up to maximum payload, and flies into hostile territory.

This movie came out in late 1985 and would have been toast had it appeared about six months later when "Top Gun" was released. The premise is improbable, the flight scenes suffer in comparison to those in "Top Gun" (instead of the carefully choreographed dogfights and editing, IE has plenty of footage of the F-16's digital instruments - the flight scenes themselves look like stock footage and repetitive at that), special effects aren't great (enemy jets explode like toy models; the MiG blasted on the ground is not only an obvious dummy, but shot at the angle to make that most obvious; the sound is horrible) and the realism is also pretty low apart from the premise - fully loaded F-16's aren't in any condition to dogfight (at least until the advent of the AIM-120 missile well after this movie came out), while flack guns seem almost entirely non-existent and enemy jets simply explode with the push of a button.

Still, this was a fun movie and seemed to capture that sense of harmless (for our side anyway) jingoism of Reagan's 2nd term. The plot goes a surprisingly long way into dealing with the inherent implausibility (Doug is good, but he's rough and his limits are well mapped out). Also, much of the reason that IE falls behind TG has to do with the fact that F-16 isn't as photogenic as the F-14 (not that it's ugly - simply that it's smaller and hard to spot. You simply see a speck that becomes an F-16 and disappears again in a flash, a deficiency on film that most F-16 pilots would doubtless prefer to live with). The Israeli Kfir jets are quite convincing stand-ins for the MiG-23 (at the time, the US Marines flew leased Kfirs in dissimilar air-combat training), and only the most annoying military aviation enthusiasts will harp on how the USAF F-16's in the movie are painted according to Israeli colors (and how single-seat F-16A's mysteriously morph into twin-seat F-16B's and vica-versa). Most of all, this was the first jet movie I'd really seen, and it was impressive enough for me to plunk down ($) for my first computer flight-sim program. On a side-note, the soundtrack comes with "One Vision" by Queen, but the rest of the songs aren't up to that. To get the song, I'd recommend Queen's own "A Kind of Magic" which also has some great tracks from the first Highlander movie.

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Excellent 80s Tribute Film
"Iron Eagle" is best described as your typical 1980s, feel-good, pro-American, rock and roll action movie. Required viewing material for those of us still on the 80s hype. While completely unrealistic, anyone who ever grew up in the Reagan-era has to love this film and its simple premise. "Iron Eagle" has everything the 80s fanatic could want: a soundtrack including Adrenalin (Road of The Gypsy), Eric Martin (Eyes of The World), Dio (Hide In The Rainbow), Twisted Sister (We're Not Gonna Take It), and Queen (One Vision); a heavy, pro-American slant; and how could we forget, actors like David Suchet and Louis Gossett. While not up to the same high-budget par as its contemporary, "Top Gun", this is still a great film. Your plot is simple: imaginary Mediterranean rouge state shoots down one of our pilots, and in return, two American rouge pilots steal F-16Bs and bomb the living daylights out of the enemy. It's a great movie to watch as a "I remember when" type of film, especially since "Iron Eagle" has all the undertones of the perpetual international crisis faced by the US during the time period.

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BEST DARN MOVIE EVER MADE, I LOVE CHAPPY
Where to begin, when I saw this movie for the first time I just feel in love with Chappy. I have yet to see a movie that even comes close to the quality that this movie embodies. If Chappy were a real person I would marry him and have a life of action and romance in his jet, going really fast all over the world and blowing stuff up. I am not sure if Chappy should be hanging out with little boy though, that could be bad. You know what they say "16 will get you 20". You just have to watch this film, you too will be swept away by the passion that Chappy exudes. If I had a chance to save my daddy from the bad guys I would want Chappy by my side, if not sitting on his lap in the cockpit of his jet.