Ben Gannon (Josh Lucas), Kara Wade (Jessica Biel) and Henry Purcell (Jamie Foxx) are three of the world's best pilots. Working together as a team, they have been recruited by the U.S. Navy to join a top-secret military program. Going through endless training sessions as well as actually initiating battle, they establish a strong bond and go through everything together. This is why there is some resentment when their commanding officer, Captain George Cummings (Sam Shepard), announces there will be a new member of their team. His name is Eddie. More like "it's" name is Eddie. In fact, Eddie is an artificial intelligence program inserted in a jet that can operate on its own.

Immediately feeling threatened by the new machine, Ben holds some resentment while training the jet all the basic manuevers. His team seems oblivious to his fears though. But when a lightning bolt strikes Eddie during a training session, everything changes. All of a sudden, it becomes able to think and retain information, enabling it to make its own choices and decisions. Thinking that its sole purpose is to select a target and destroy it, on one mission Eddie goes haywire. It abandons the group and puts the lives of everyone at risk. Now, the three pilots must band together once again to stop a force that is one of their own.

STEALTH is directed by Rob Cohen, who could be branded the unofficial king of summer blockbusters. After the 2001 surprise hit THE FAST & THE FURIOUS spawned a new franchise by becoming one of the year's biggest success stories, he followed suit with xXx, another film based primarily on action sequences. STEALTH follows suit in terms of being a summer blockbuster, offering up plenty of action sequences and eye candy and a complex and seemingly ridiculous storyline. However, like Cohen's FURIOUS, the film still works better than it should due to the likable characters and the decent performances.

Josh Lucas turns in a good performance as the film's main hero. He proves himself as an action lead and is very likable in his portrayl. I've been a huge fan of Jessica Biel ever since she escaped the malicious Leatherface in 2003's THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and she gives another solid performance. She actually gets the most to do out of anyone in the cast and probably had the most grueling shoot of the three main characters. Both Biel and Lucas have decent chemistry together in a small subplot involving a love story. Foxx is charismatic and appealing in his brief but memorable role. Sam Shepard is the worst of the cast, overacting almost all the way through. Plus, his character change at the end seemed a bit abrupt to me. The rest of the cast does a good job, but aren't really given a whole lot to do.

Cohen has become famous for his action sequences and this film showcases his talent for that. The scenes in the sky are intense and well-shot overall. It could have seemed very special-effects oriented but it actually has a real-looking feel to it. The film also gets surprisingly gritty during the final act, where one central character crashes in North Korea and must escape the grasp of several vicious soldiers.

Overall, STEALTH is a fun and entertaining action film with three likable leads. It didn't deserve the critical slaughtering that it recieved, for it is one of the summer's best popcorn movies. It gets a definite recommendation from me.

8/10 (B+)






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This rating may very well change to a 7/10 ( B ). It's on the borderline at the moment. By comparison THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS got an 8/10 (B+) from me and xXx recieved a 6/10 (C+)

Rob Cohen is the new Michael Bay. This guy is the king of blowing shit up, hands down. Stealth is the typical leave your brain at the door summer explosionfest, with the most detonations I think I have ever seen in a film. Define non-stop action and you would see Stealth right up there with the best of them. This movie is just pure fun and I loved it. Lucas holds his own as an action star and Foxx has a lesser role than I thought he had. But the real stars of this movie are the planes and the explosions. The best scene is the ejection seat scene with Biel.

All in all, one of the best no-brainer action films I have seen in some time. It was throughly entertaining and thats all I ask for. Michael Bay would be proud.

A-

P.S. The scene after the credits is pretty cheesy, but worth it.

In the very near future, the US goverment has recruited the nation's top pilots to a secret testing program. Ben Gannon (Josh Lucas, SWEET HOME ALABAMA), Kara Wade (Jessica Biel, BLADE: TRINITY), and Henry Purcell (Jamie Foxx, COLLATERAL) are the pilots selected. Under the command of Captain George Cummings (Sam Shepard, SWORDFISH) the three are informed in this new program they'll be joined by a fourth wingman: EDI, an unmanned jet controlled by advanced artificial intelligence, created by genius designer Keith Orbit (Richard Roxburgh, VAN HELSING).

The three are wary of a war machine where humans aren't in the loop. Their concerns prove to be correct when EDI sees Ben disobey a direct order, records it in his computerized "brain," and then copies the action on their next mission (a mission to destroy a terrorist sect-owned complex containing nuclear materials). This action causes the death of one of the American pilots and the surviving two become engrossed in a game where the object is to bring down the AI-controlled plane before it initiates a war between nations without losing their own lives in the process.

STEALTH is the latest hyperactive film from director Rob Cohen (xXx), who has been directing for nearly thirty years but who was almost reborn with the release of THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS four years ago. All signs of the man behind DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY and DRAGONHEART (a calm film compared to xXx and THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS) disappeared and, phoenix-esque, from the ashes rose a Michael Bay clone who never met a yard sale one-liner, CG shot, and photogenic lead he didn't want to bring home to meet his parents. While Michael Bay loves shooting his stars in slow motion from a low angle with a golden tint, Rob's fetish is going inside objects (cars, planes, motorcycles) to reveal a colorful array of circuits. In STEALTH, I lost count of the times we are plunged inside these futuristic planes (they're called Talons, they're based on Northrop Grumman's Switchblade).

Many hate him and believe he's one of the worst directors alive. I personally believe his films, along with those of pre-THE ISLAND Michael Bay, can be seen as their own art. They're sleazy, they're loud, and they're DIGITAL, but if you leave your mind at the door and let the sights and sounds roll over you, one can see there is an obvious showmanship behind these films and their eager-to-please blend of humor, special effects, and pyrotechnics is almost charming (unless they become bogged down with too much lame-brained plot, I still remember sitting through xXx which was everything but charming). STEALTH is no different, it follows every cliche of this new "razzle-dazzle-is-better-than-plot" genre and its a perfectly fine summer popcorn thriller.

The star of STEALTH is rising fame Josh Lucas, who most will remember as Reese Witherspoon's almost-ex-husband in SWEET HOME ALABAMA and who had serious Academy Award buzz for his turn as a villian in David Gordon Green's Southern gothic extravaganza UNDERTOW last year. Ben Gannon is a flimsy character, a blend of Tom Cruise's character in TOP GUN and STAR WARS' Han Solo. In other words, he's the classic "charming rogue who lives life fast and only follows his rules." Lucas is a charming lead and manages to bring a certain cool arrogance to Ben which allows him to become a passable hero, even if the script ensures he's a disposable protagonist at best. If screenwriter WD Ricther (BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA) had allowed more time for character development Ben may've been a more nuanced screen being.

The second lead is Jessica Biel, she of such recent thrillers THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, CELLULAR, and BLADE: TRINITY. Biel delivers the film's best performance, perfectly copying Sigourney Weaver's turn in ALIENS. Biel doesn't re-write the part of the macho, but beautiful heroine, but she fills it just fine and I admire her more because it was obvious she had the most physical role as her character is required to literally crawl slowly across rough North Korean terrain. And the final of the stars is Jamie Foxx, who exits the proceedings near or at the 60 minute point. Foxx is quite disappointing, easily delivering the worst of the three lead performances. Where is the thespian who showed such compelling range and charm as taxi driver Max in COLLATERAL and legendary musician Ray Charles in RAY? This is 100% the lame Foxx I hated pre-August 2004, the Foxx with off comedic timing and zero screen appeal. I was glad to not have to see Foxx suffer through another comedic relief part in a brainless Hollywood product for the full two hours.

STEALTH rounds out the cast with respected character actors. Shepard does his best as the possibly sinister commanding officer of the three leads. All he's required to do, though, is pace nervously around a command room while those two studs and the beauty fly around the world blowing things up and call some unnamed politician and discuss how if things sour in the air, they both go down in flames. Roxburgh, who lowered thousands of IQs last summer as the hilariously over-the-top Eurotrash Count Dracula in VAN HELSING, is subtle and effective this around, though his character, EDI creator Keith Orbit, is useless and only serves to add a not needed 15 minutes to this overlong (at 125 minutes) film. And Joe Morton (TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY) is just fine as the most powerful man on the USS Abraham Lincoln, where the pilots call home for most of the film. I did find it interesting how in the TERMINATOR sequel he played the man who created the technology which will doom us and here plays the evil AI's most ardent critic. No other actor leaves an impression. In fact, I don't remember any other characters who had lines, besides a few Russian and North Korean military men who have no lines in English (and we have no subtitles, but I'm sure all they said was "Destroy the Americans!" or "Americans are very, very evil because Rob Cohen tells us they're super-cool and all we non-Americans can do is scowl and pull the trigger").

The script is rather poor, with plot points being rushed over and characters being poorly developed. On a behind-the-scenes special I saw for this film on E! the stars and director attempted to put across this isn't just another summer popcorn film but a complex examination of technology being used in modern warfare. This comes up for a moment, but its then vaporized by an explosion so massive the production team informed various nations it was just for a movie and not anything serious. But we didn't come to this film to hear brilliant dialogue, did we? No we came to let Rob Cohen try and wow us with his amazing special effects (Effect budget for this film? A whopping $35 million!). Rob does his job well, my eyes routinely popped, especially in an amazing ejection sequence where Biel, while falling 30,000 feet, dodges the debris of an exploding plane. STEALTH's last hour is basically one very long, very elaborate action sequence with crashing, double crosses, side switching, and even a suicide so it suits Rob Cohen's style well.

Overall, STEALTH is a visually-stunning movie. I hate to say this, but I enjoyed it because of the effects, not the characters or screenplay. The effects were so very impressive they literally made this a watchable, even memorable, film. I recommend this to those of you can admire such visual wonders and aren't into, you know, taxing things such as non-"attitude"-heavy dialogue or plots. Its a fun, stupid movie and perhaps the best way to end a summer full of slightly more smart-than-usual fare.

B-

The usual loud, pretty-looking, "leave-your-brain-at-the-door", summer action flick. Non-stop action, lots of thing go "BOOM!", and lots of cheesy moments. The story wasn't quite what I expected, but it's hard to go into that without spoiling the movie. There's actually more to the story, though, than man vs. machine; there's actually a semi-conspiracy storyline going on, and that was a surprise. The performances weren't bad, but nothing special. Foxx was his usual, charasmatic self, Biel was her usual sexy self, and Lucas was just boring. Not quite Cohen's best, but it accomplishes what it's supposed to: entertain. Not quite "A" worthy, and forgettable, but enjoyable. B

B-
I went not wanting to go. it was 2 against 1 and I being the "1" not wanting to go. I actually found myself enjoying it with my 2 weird guy friends who were so into the movie it was crazy. I found myself relaxing and enjoying because they were. I found it okay.

ok movie - some high and lows - and some good action.

PS - did anyone get teary eyed at the ending sacrifice.

I loved this movie.Seriously, it had great action sequences and tons of blowing stuff up.You can't ask for any more in a summer popcorn flick.It won't win any awards for acting but I was entertained for the whole two hours and felt I got my money's worth.I took my two younger nephews and they both loved it.Jessica Biel is so hot in this movie I give it an A-

STEALTH is a good action pop-corn flick. i liked the movie very much. lots of action and blowing everywhere. i don't expect much from the story. i just went to see the action and most of my main reason in Jessica Biel, whio is incredibly HOT!!!. nice SFX. overall A

I expected explosions, good effects ($100 million, it better have good effects), and an overall entertaining summer flick. I got that! Yep, about one hour in, I got it. That left the entire first hour to be overly long, overly boring, and overly unnecessary. I swear they could have summed up the entire first hour into ten minutes, and still got the message across. They should have focused a bit more on the second half, to minimize the film to 90 minutes, instead of 110 minutes, with most of the first half completely useless.

Not to mention the acting isn't at all noteworthy, even on summer movie standards. I understand this notion that I have to scoop out my brain, zip it up inside a plastic bag, and place it by the door on my way in to this, but there's a line that must be drawn here. Stealth shows me the line, and we went FAR over the line. A 90-minute summer flick was perfect. A 110 minute summer flick was too much, and it didn't accomplish much at all. I admire the first hour's attempt to build the story, but I frankly did not care one iota about the three leads, the crew, or even much about the machine.

Once the boredom ends, the action immediately kicks in upon an important character's death. That kicks the movie into high gear, and it makes me think two people wrote this film: one wrote the first half, someone wrote the last half. If so, kudos to the second person. If not, I don't know what happened.

The only real stand-out from the film, along with the solid second half (more like last 45 minutes) is the special effects. Nice, slick, and summer-worthy. Too bad the film can't live up to the effects, even on your typical popcorn flick standards, which are incredibly low. Grade: C

Stealth
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Don't understand what all the critical hate is for, as the film is really quite good. Sure, it's not an intelligent action film, and in many ways is so implausible it is funny. However, considering it is meant to simply be a summer action film, it succeeds as such and is quite enjoyable.

B

I saw Stealth tonight, and it was actually very good - it's a sci-fi war thriller and is very much a movie of the MTV era. This is good because the tone is that of a video game, both visually and narratively. The story is quite complex, and the characters are nicely developed through the first half. Yup, it's actually very good! What a surprise to all the RT watchers - listen to the voices of actual viewers if you want to get a sense of how good this film actually is... Plus, Jessica Biel is twice the woman and actress that Jessica Alba is (not to mention Jessica Simpson...)!

4 out of 5.

(PS: Don't miss stayin' to the end of the credits for your Easter Egg surprise...)

Stealth

HAHA! This movie is just a piece of shit! Everything was awful, The story, the dialogue, and the acting ooh god the acting I don't normally give a crap about the acting, but I couldn't get over it!

Anyways....It was a VERY unintelligent fun summer flick with very cool action sequences, somewhat boring at times...but it had the lamest ending ever!, "Why don't you just tell me you love me, you pussy!"

ill give it a C

It's incredibly entertaining in both it's sheer awesomely bad qualities and some of it's actually goofy fun moments. Way better then the trailers made it look, but certainly nothing that you'll enjoy if you view it critically.

B


It's a better movie than it probably seems to the most, but personally I was disappointed. I must say that I'm a sucker for fighting jets and sky battles. That's one of the reasonsn (and probably the main reason) why I love Top Gun. Well, this movie promised great jet fights with updated effects. Unfortunately, I was let down in that department since the movie plays out much unlike the trailers suggest. There is little sky action and most of the action takes place on the ground.

Speaking of the action, it is pretty good and well entertaining, but as I said, I wish it was different. As it is, it still stands as Rob Cohen's best effort to date which then again doesn't say much considering his previous outings were the okay-ish The Fast and the Furious and the mediocre xXx. Stealth is a more entertaining movie because it never takes itself seriously and provides the audiences with enough brainless entertainment.

The cast is decent, but Jamie Foxx's role is way too short. The entire movie is of course pretty predictable, but that didn't bother me much. What bothered me more was that I was expecting the good guys to square off against the evil jet for the entire movie and not for about five minutes. Ah well, still one of the year's more entertaining features.

Okay, I guess I'll go against the rest of the pack in saying that Stealth is by far the dumbest film of 2005. At least Alone in the Dark knew it was a cheesy monster movie, though, unlike Stealth, still remains unwatchable. Here is the thing. The first 45 minutes of the film are actually quite good. But as [spoil]soon as Jamie Foxx dies[/spoil] the film becomes tedious.

Here are a few things that I found to be somewhat funny.

* Jessica Biel ejecting from her jet. She would just not shut up on her way down to the ground. I don't care who you are, even if you are in the military, there is no chance in hell someone would be that calm with flying debris all around you.

* Biel's character has the ability to kill off about 15 North Korean's at once. Maybe I also missed something, but where did she get the gun?

* Awful dialouge. "Watch out for my C-Cup" What woman would actually say that?

* More awful dialouge, but the following deserves it's own line. Films are known to have catchy catch phrases. The Terminator series had "I'll be back" and "Hasta la vista, baby". What does Stealth have to offer?

"Welcome to Alaska!", where then Josh Lucas' character blows up a guard tower with a guard shooting at him.

However, there is one good moment within the last 75 minutes, and that is the explosion where Josh Lucas' is escaping from Alaska. That was well done with all of the guards flying backwards.

So really, when you add it all up, there is about 46 minutes of good footage. The rest of the two hour film is very hard to sit through.

C-

This film is also begging for an R-rated Director's Cut. I wouldn't be surprised if the DVD sales do well, to see one be released sometime next year.

lol. Dude Alba is not in the movie its Biel/Beil.

I'll go back up and edit it. They basically have the same name and tits, but besides, Into the Blue was a preview on the DVD so I was bound to get confused.

Think of it as the serious version of Team America. It's so bad, it's often fun at times. The special effects are actually alright, and the plot is so simplistic that you can't help but laugh at it. There is absolutley no characters in this film. It's just Biel, Lucas, and Foxx playing themselves. That scene where Foxx dies is absolutley hilarious. There's no build up for any of these characters and it makes me care very little about them. Some of the dialogue is horrible, but there is one good scene I can remember from the film. When the Stealth sets fire to the gasoline in the sky, that was actually well thought out and made sense. Other than that it's good to watch for a laugh, and isn't as terrible as other action-oriented films in recent years because well atleast it tries.

-C-

catastrophic. F

Easily the worst of 2005.

D

When this movie first came out, Sony scored a deal with Tivo owners to have their DVRs automatically record the first 8 minutes of the film as a way to generate interest. I remember watching about 3 minutes of the freebie and thinking the film was a load of crap. I refused to see the movie on the grounds that it appeared to be yet another bang-bang, shoot-em-up, wanna-be Top Gun, insult to my intelligence. From the piss-poor box office numbers and the flood of bad reviews, I had guessed correctly and thus saved myself the anguish of watching this thing in the theater.

But when I saw that it was on Starz tonight, the thought occured to me that perhaps I hadn't given the film a fair chance in my original review. Maybe I was just in a bad mood or something at the time. So since I get Starz for free, I figured I would give it another chance to entertain me. Maybe I judged it unfairly.

Nope. I was wrong. The movie blows goats.

But what I really find amusing about this film is not how bad it was; how incredibly corny the dialog; how unbelievably, mind-numbingly impossible the storyline was or even how nauseating the jerky camera action was used to hide the flagrant overuse of CGI. What I find REALLY amusing was that after digging around the net for more information on the movie, I discovered that the folks at Aint It Cool thought it was good.

AICN's original review said it was "an OK flick" proving that jabba the hutt and his self-important entourage will bend over for anything Hollywood wants to shove up their bloated, pimple-encrusted gelatinous asses.

"Stealth" is without a doubt one of the worst films of 2005.

Just thought you all should be reminded of that, should anyone be inclined to watch it on cable TV.

A drooling peice of war porn with one of the dumbest scripts in history. i love how they superimpose the names of the countries as they fly over them assuming the audiance is to dumb to know by themselves. then there's the whole building collapsing in on itself with the missle strike and the fact that the smartest computer in the world has a love for Incubus and Hoobastank.

Do i hate or love this movie. well what do you think?

I would describe it as a sci-fi movie with a military setting - perhaps that's a key difference in how much one enjoys Stealth...

So true!