L'arme absolue

... and by my count this line was spoken at least seven times here.

This is a cold war thriller from Clint Eastwood about a Vietnam vet fighter pilot sent undercover and across the iron curtain to steal a new Soviet super-plane. The first two-thirds of the film are a treat, with a lot of tense scenes of Clint and his sympathetic Russian contacts narrowly escaping capture. The last section is where the film loses steam, with a lot of repetitious, dated fx shots of the jet in action.

Warren Clarke is memorable as Clint's chief contact. Also featured are Freddie Jones, Ronald Lacey, Nigel Hawthorne, and Kenneth Colley. As you may have noticed, there are no women listed; this is the rare film with no substantial female presence at all. The real star, though, other than Clint, is the fictional MiG31 "Firefox" fighter jet, invisible to radar, capable of Mach 6 speeds as well as full nuclear armament. The film also borders on science fiction with the jet's thought-controlled weapon systems.

It is a 50/50 proposition as to whether you will like this one. For me it was fun to see Eastwood stretch his directorial skills in a different direction, and even more fun if you actually remember the cold war...or were even alive during the cold war for that matter.