BLACK THUNDER updates the old Cold War thriller formula by replacing the Soviets with Arabs, but it's really the same jingoistic stuff, and not terribly well done.
During a test of the Nova, an Air Force stealth jet nicknamed "Black Thunder," a Libyan agent posing as a pilot steals the "invisible" plane and apparently kills the American flyer, Tom Ratcher (Richard Norton). The Air Force calls upon Vince Connors (Michael Dudikoff), a top gun trained by Tom,
to travel over the Atlantic and retrieve Black Thunder. On his mission, Vince reluctantly pairs with Rick Jannick (Gary Hudson), a daredevil Vince considers a mere skydiver. Vince and Rick know they have only 24 hours before the US President will order carpet bombing of Libya.
Once in Libya, Vince and Rick land their supersonic SR-71 and fight on the ground against Libyan soldiers while searching for the jet. During the scramble, Rick is caught and taken prisoner by Stone (Rob Madrid), the leader of the terrorist group that stole the plane, and Vince hides out in the
home of a sympathetic dissident, Mela (Nancy Valen). With Mela's help, Vince tries to rescue Rick from the army base and steal back Black Thunder. However, Rick is injured in a shootout, but before he dies, he blows up the entire base, with Stone in it.
Just as he makes his getaway, Vince learns that the American traitor behind the original theft was none other than Tom, his beloved teacher; in the air, Tom chases down Vince in order to steal the plane again, or at least make a deal with his former student. But Vince, feeling betrayed, kills Tom
with a missile and brings Black Thunder back safely to Edwards Air Force Base in California. His commander offers him a medal for averting the all-out war, but Vince says the honors should really go to Rick, who died for his country.
Quoting TOP GUN (1986) and FIREFOX (1982), BLACK THUNDER takes nostalgic delight in reviving the sort of high-flying heroics that characterized Cold War spy thrillers. The film also pages the spy-mask gambit from the "Mission: Impossible" 1960s TV series and its subsequent movie version. The
reactionary ideology is the same, but BLACK THUNDER ranks at least a grade below those films in terms of quality--from the woeful performance by Rob Madrid as the lead terrorist to the backlight reflections on the pilots' helmets, BLACK THUNDER is a botched job.
One might wonder why Roger Corman would want to executive produce a film with so little redeeming artistic value (an argument can usually be made for his other cheesy genre outings, however low-budget), or what attracted Frederic Forrest to make a bland, meaningless cameo (as an admiral) in such
an effort. Still, even today's best action flicks turn Arabs into bad guys, make the female leads shed their clothes, and contain technical glitches (just look at James Cameron's TRUE LIES), so perhaps it's unfair to pick on a little straight-to-video release like BLACK THUNDER.(Violence, nudity,
sexual situations, adult situations, extreme profanity.) leave a comment
