Firefox

"Let's see what this baby can do".

Clint Eastwood dives headfirst into the Cold War with this very serious spy thriller about a fictional super-jet (Firefox) perfected by the 'evil' Russians and coveted by the 'good' and freedom-loving Americans. Eastwood plays the reluctant, burnt-out super soldier called back into duty for a suicide mission. The first hour or so of the film is a tense and slowly-paced espionage movie before shifting a hi-tech action chase, a rather oddly structured approach that doesn't really do the audience any favours.

Mitchell Gant (Eastwood) is a biologically half-Russian but culturally all-American hero suffering from delayed stress syndrome due to the Vietnam War. He's called upon to go behind the iron curtain and steal Firefox, so he goes undercover as a moustachioed heroin smuggler with glasses and a comb-over and sneaks into Russia. He doesn't cope very well though, especially when he's left to fend for himself behind enemy lines, and he very much seems out of his depth. He goes further and further behind the curtain, eventually even assuming a Russian identity ('Boris Glaznov'), before grabbing the Firefox and transforming into the Eastwoodian hero we all know he really is.

Gant isn't too much of a stretch as far as Clint Eastwood characters go... he starts out as a bearded post-traumatic Vietnam vet suffering quietly in a pine forest cabin, reliving his capture at the hands of the Viet Cong. He doesn't seem like a very likely hero, but then an American helicopter visits him and he responds to the noise by trying to face it down armed only with a shotgun, suggesting that this is a man living on the edge. When he gets behind enemy lines it becomes quite a tricky situation though because he's entirely on his own - and to make things worse he has to also cope with this debilitating form of post-war stress that can strike at any moment. Having said that, this is all in the first half of the film, by the time he steals Firefox (around the half-way mark) there isn't really much room for characterisation as it's all action from this point on, and it feels like a completely different movie.

Firefox is a very serious and almost ominous film at first. We're treated to an hour of Eastwood looking baffled as he's guided through layers of subterfuge in the Soviet Union. It's actually a bit boring, and it begins to feel like a pointless exercise. Russia itself is depicted as a horrible, fascistic place full of suspicious people. Tellingly, Eastwood's character is eventually helped by a Jewish resistance force within Russia's borders (did such a thing even exist in the 1980s?). What films like Firefox seem to gloss over though is just how big Russia really is. Why is it so hard for Gant to move around in the Soviet Union (and it's so easy for him to be tracked?) It's the polar opposite of an action-thriller set in America, in which the authorities would have to work hard to even find the criminal (see Nighthawks, any Dirty Harry film, etc, etc) In Firefox the 'criminal' (Gant) has to work hard just to move from one place to the other. It's quite a blinkered American view of a supposedly all-pervading Soviet Empire, and it's probably the one aspect that dates this film the most.

There are a few other a few glaring holes in the film's logic as well... we're never told why Gant agrees so readily to embark on this suicide mission that obviously scares the wits out of him, nor is it made clear how the American 'heroes' can justify stealing a Russian plane just because it's more awesome then their own planes. Also some of the internal logic in the Russian-set portion of the film doesn't make any sense. Why do the Russians speak English when they're on their own, yet Eastwood later speaks in Russian to convince some Russians that he's one of them? The hokey music doesn't help the overall feel of the production either - it's especially out of place when Eastwood creeps into the hanger to steal Firefox and it's accompanied by an easygoing synth-jazz bop that undercuts the suspensful tone completely.

One thing that I did find interesting in the later parts of Firefox is that Eastwood (the 'good' guy) is dressed in black whilst the Russian pilot (the 'bad' guy) is dressed in orange and white, perhaps suggesting some subconscious acknowledgement of the dodgy ethics at play. Firefox itself is the kind of chic 1980s version of futuristic that fueled a lot of action films, being an 'invisible' Mach 5 aircraft with modern weapons capability. Whilst the glossy 1980s bluescreen and other associated special effects aren't as slick as they could've been, it still makes for an thumping international aerial chase. I can't say I really got into the rest of the film all that much, but the aerial chase scenes were at least fun to watch.

DIRECTOR: Clint Eastwood
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Alex Lasker and Wendell Wellman, based on a novel by Craig Thomas.
KEY ACTORS: Clint Eastwood, Freddie Jones, David Huffman, Nigel Hawthorne, Warren Clarke, Ronald Lacey

RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel Firefox, written by Craig Thomas and released in 1977. This novel was followed by a sequel, Firefox Down, and two further books involving the same characters - Winter Hawk and A Different War.
- Eastwood's movie inspired an arcade game, also called Firefox.
- Clint Eastwood's only other real foray into the fictionalised world of espionage was The Eiger Sanction.
- Other stealth aircraft thriller/adventures: Top Gun, Blue Thunder, Airwolf and Stealth.
- See also Cold War thrillers along the lines of The Hunt for the Red October, Crimson Tide, K-19: The Widowmaker and Hostile Waters.