The Park Is Mine

Remember that time Tommy Lee Jones played an unhinged Vietnam veteran who leads an armed takeover of New York? No, Exploding Helicopter didn’t either.

And little wonder. The Park Is Mine (1986), which was originally made for Canadian TV, is a curious wee turkey. At first glance, this tale of a ‘Nam soldier going on a violent rampage after being pushed too far looks like just another one of the Rambo rip-offs that plagued the Eighties.

But wipe away its camouflage paint-smeared exterior and you’ll find a far, far weirder film. Because in this movie, the loon-eyed shouty guy with a bag of explosives is presented not as a violence-crazed domestic terrorist, but a public folk hero.

And if you’re already confused, there’s bad news on the way: we’ve not even reached the plot yet.

The plot

Take a deep breath, now. Disgruntled Vietnam veteran, Mitch (Tommy Lee Jones), gets a posthumous letter from an old war buddy who’s just committed suicide, containing plans for a paramilitary takeover of New York’s iconic Central Park. The dead pal asks Mitch to commandeer the park in order to, er, highlight the way veterans have been forgotten by society.

So, using a secret weapons cache (natch!), Mitch does exactly that. And when he also fends off a counter-offensive by the NYPD, the public takes to the streets in his support for some reason that is not immediately clear, possibly even to the film’s director.

Humiliated by this scenario, the dastardly NY deputy mayor secretly orders two mercenaries to kill Mitch. But Mitch instead bumps off the mercenaries, then gives himself up to the police.

And that’s it.

At no stage is the question of what the point was of the whole exercise even remotely addressed.

Drama-free zone

This is confusing stuff, certainly, but unfortunately it’s not in the least dramatic. You see, in order to retain the audience’s sympathy, the film refuses to let Mitch actually hurt anyone. Remember, kids: he’s fighting ‘the man’, not individual people.

So incredibly, the grizzled vet effects a wholesale paramilitary takeover of Central Park using nothing more lethal than blank ammunition and smoke bombs. (Exactly how the assembled might of the NYPD fails to notice this is just another baffling element that’s never explained.)

Talking of unsolved mysteries, the film also never really explains quite what Mitch is protesting against or campaigning for. What’s more, he’s only threatening to stay in the park for three days, until Veterans’ Day, so it’s always evident that the whole situation could be peacefully resolved by simply doing nothing.

Heaping confusion onto unlikelihood, the film gradually veers farther and farther away from a realistic scenario. Like one of the fake bombs used in the takeover, it splutters ineffectually before finally fizzling out.

The cast

Tommy Lee Jones was almost 50 before The Fugitive made him ‘Tommy Lee Jones’, the movie star. Before then, the baggy-eyed Texan spent 20 years slogging his way through bit parts and dreck-ish TV movies such as this.

It’s a testament to TLJ’s future greatness that he’s able to at least partially humanise such a thinly written character as Mitch and make him in half-way sympathetic. The only other familiar face the great Yaphet Kotto (Alien, Live And Let Die), playing a policeman drafted in to handle the crisis.

Exploding helicopter action

Speaking of no drama… About halfway through the movie, police snipers in a helicopter are ordered to fly over the park and take out Tommy Lee Jones. Our Rambo-impersonating hero fires at them, but very pointedly only aims only at the chopper’s tail rotor, damaging the whirlybird.

Trailing smoke, the damaged helicopter spins around in the air before making an emergency landing. All the crew jumps out to safety long before the aircraft suddenly combusts.

Artistic merit

While there’s a spectacular fireball to enjoy, its impact is defused by the yawn-worthy staging. The helicopter crew takes an absolute age to safely disembark – you’ll see faster exiting in an episode of On The Buses – and only then can the pyrotechnics supervisor trigger the explosion. And frankly, a stationary and empty helicopter explosion isn’t all that interesting to watch.

Favourite quote

“I have a message for New York. Central Park is mine.”

Review by Jafo

Still want more? Then have a listen to the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode where we review The Park Is Mine. Find us on iTunes, Stitcher, Acast, Spotify and all the usual place.

Fire Birds

In 1986, Top Gun took the breath away (geddit?) of films fans around the world.

An exciting tale of testosterone-fuelled fighter pilots engaged in death-defying aerial dogfights, the film did however sport one noticeable flaw: no helicopters.

Fortunately, that grave error was corrected a few years later with the release of Fire Birds (1990) - or Wings of the Apache as it’s sometimes called.

This not-entirely-original film is ‘inspired by’ (Hollywood parlance for bare-facedly nicked from) the plot of Top Gun. Still, at least here they’ve made the obvious improvement of swapping all fixed wing aircraft for everyone’s favourite rotor-bladed model. Only makes sense, really.

The plot

America is losing the war on drugs. Narcotics are being smuggled across the border with impunity, as the evil (ie. foreign) cartels have hired a mysterious helicopter ace to shoot down US air patrols.

With their men outgunned and out-flown, Uncle Sam sends his top pilots to an elite flight school. Their mission is simple: prepare for a deadly and visually entertaining attack on their deadly foe.

Will our heroes complete their demanding training? Are they equipped to defeat their lethal enemy? Can they become Top Gun? (Well, would you want to ‘become a Fire Bird’? It just sounds ridiculous.)

Who the hell’s in this?

Given the numerous similarities to Top Gun, it’s perhaps easiest to outline the Fire Birds cast in relation to the original players.

Nicolas Cage: horse faced, hair replacement enthusiast

So, who’s playing the cocky, hot-shot pilot who has more to learn about humility than flying a helicopter? (In other words, the Tom Cruise role.) Yes, it’s everybody’s favourite horse-featured over-actor, hair replacement enthusiast Nicolas Cage.

As Cage’s love interest - the surrogate Kelly McGillis - we have Sean Young, who you’ll remember from Blade Runner – and frankly, nothing else.

That’s because the stroppy moppet was famously so crashingly horrible to work with, even by Hollywood’s own risible standards, that the entire film industry shut her out.

Meanwhile, Tommy Lee Jones stars as a gruff military task-master who belittles, berates and bullies his charges into finding their true potential as crack pilots. (Of course, any similarity to Tom Skerritt’s character in Top Gun is entirely intentional).

Normally a reliable and classy presence in any film, TLJ gives possibly the worst performance of his career. Forced by a duff script to deliver turgid mouthfuls of macho claptrap, the baggy-eyed thespian seems to visibly throw in the towel. Rarely have lines been recited on film with such monotone disinterest.

The only convincing moment comes when an ashen-faced Tommy quietly reflects on the horror of war. Though perhaps he was merely contemplating his next page of dialogue.

Just how similar is this to Top Gun?

Extended aerial training montage? Check.

Alpha male meatheads engaging in testosterone-fuelled braggadocio? Check.

Soft-focus sex scene sound-tracked by a sax-heavy pop song? Check.

We hope those knickers were clean from the wash

Fire Birds even goes so far as giving Cage a dead best friend to grieve over. We all know Goose died in Top Gun. And it’s clearly where this film’s ideas of originality did too.

Mercifully, Fire Birds does spare us the sight, not to mention sound, of Nic Cage performing an a cappella version of a beloved Sixties pop hit.

But given the film’s sole attempt at an original scene involves Cage running around with a pair of scarlet coloured knickers over his head, maybe they should have just stuck to the karaoke.

What is the level of ‘Cage rage’?

Ah, Nicolas Cage. It’s quite possible that somewhere inside him is an actor of subtlety and craft.

Unfortunately, film fans remain stuck with the scenery-chewing show-off who has become a byword for actorly excess. Al Pacino could feasibly watch Cage’s movies and complain that, really, this is all a bit much.

From the moment the film begins, our leading equestrian seems determined to unleash the full range of his dubious talents. There are frequent outbursts of shouting, unexplained goofing, and the kind of exaggerated emotional responses generally only seen in an attention-seeking toddler.

All this grandstanding comes to a head in a marvellous scene of spectacularly unrestrained ‘Cage rage’. Practicing in a flight simulator, our Nic becomes so enamoured of his own abilities that he starts wildly shouting ‘I am the greatest’ over and over again.

Possibly the only thing more bizarre than Cage’s performance in this sequence is the fact that the director, and others responsible for this film, looked through this footage and agreed: “Yes, this is good. We can use this.”

Exploding helicopter action

Fire Birds contains the mother lode of exploding helicopters. And viewers don’t have to wait long before striking chopper fireball gold.

The film immediately throws us into an air combat duel between US pilots and the rogue ‘copter ace. After out-flying his opponents, the villain uses his chopper’s machineguns to shoot two whirlybirds out of the sky.

We also get two further helicopter explosions in the film’s big aerial finale, including Cage dramatically shooting down the villain after an extended dogfight.

And while you might expect the middle of the film to dip slightly, with too many ‘talkie’ bits and little of interest for the true chopper fireball fan, you’d be quite wrong.

In order to hone his skills, Cage is required to practice destroying enemy aircraft in a flight simulator. During the sequence, we get to see the Shergar’s less handsome brother shoot down nine – yes, nine – CGI helicopters.

Artistic merit

The real exploding helicopters are pretty good. Fire and wreckage fill the screen, but there are none of the thrills that the chopper combustion cognoscenti appreciate. For instance, we don’t get to see flaming wreckage fall to the ground, or rotor blades violently sheering off.

Meanwhile, the flight simulator fireballs are basic in the extreme. Little more than pixelated yellow splodges. In fairness, this was 1990 when even cutting edge computer graphics looked little better than a crayoned drawing.

Number of exploding helicopters

This is the point where Fire Birds becomes one of the most controversial films Exploding Helicopter has ever reviewed. Should the computer graphic helicopters destroyed in the flight simulator be counted in the final total?

It’s an important question as, were they to be included, Fire Birds would have a record breaking 13 exploding helicopters (Battleship is the current record holder with eight).

Having cogitated at length on this issue, Exploding Helicopter has felt it improper to include these chopper fireballs in the final tally.

Chopper fireball fans want to see real helicopters blown-up in all their fiery, rotor-bladed glory, not badly rendered computer graphics. Therefore, the final total has been officially ratified as four.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Only known destruction of a computer graphic helicopter.

The only similar examples we’ve seen are the animated chopper fireballs in Dreamworks’ Monsters vs Aliens and one in 22 Jump Street’s closing credits.

Favourite line

Sean Young uses a rocket launcher to shoot down a jet fighter before unconvincingly delivering the line: “Snort that, sucker.”

Tagline

In keeping with a film full of empty bombast, the tagline is the entirely fatuous: ‘The best just got better’.

Review by: Jafo

Still want more? Then you can listen to our discuss Fire Birds on the Exploding Helicopter podcast. Listen on iTunes, Podomatic or YourListen.

Under Siege

Steven Seagal stars as Casey Ryback, a Navy SEAL turned cook, who single-handedly takes down an entire ship full of crazed terrorists out to hijack its cache of nuclear weapons.

It may have been made in 1992, but director Andrew Davis must be given credit for including every Eighties action cliché imaginable. Gratuitous nudity (thank you Erika Eleniak)? Check. A boisterous frat boy party atmosphere with a blues rock soundtrack? Check. Important military types sat at an enormous table barking one-liners? Check.

All this may make Under Siege sound like a terrible film, especially as it’s star – the stony-faced Seagal - has the emotional range of an Easter Island statue. Yet, despite its supposed flaws the film is a rollicking entertainment that can be enjoyed with embarrassment.

Exploding helicopter action

So, to the exploding helicopter action, and there are two examples of the art to enjoy.

After the villains take control of the ship, Seagal and Eleniak sneak on to the deck of the battleship on which the action takes place. Big Steve spots a huge twin rotor Kawasaki/Vertol KV107.

After liberally splashing the helicopter with paint thinner, Old Totem Face sets alight the fuel which causes the chopper to explode. Seagal only escapes the blast by jumping over the side of the ship.

Later in the film, a team of Navy Seals is called in to retake the ship. However, if Seagal was worried that a chopper full of kick-ass action stars were about to come aboard and steal his thunder, he needn't have been.

Tommy Lee Jones uses the battleship’s defence systems to knock the helicopter out of the sky with a flick of a switch. Seagal's presence as the biggest action star on the ship is secured.

Artistic merit

The scene where Seagal blows up the deck-bound chopper was nominated for the MTV award for best action sequence, losing out to the freeway scene in Terminator 2. There can be no higher accolade than that. Well, almost no higher accolade.

Exploding helicopter innovation

It is rare thing to see a stationary helicopter being used purely as an explosive diversion rather than a fiery tomb for its occupants.

Number of exploding helicopters

Two.

Favourite quote

Seagal: “What is this babbling bullshit?”

Review by: Neon Messiah

Batman Forever

After Tim Burton jumped ship, the captaincy of the Batman franchise passed d to Joel Schumacher – with near disastrous consequences.  

With Michael Keaton also departing, the bat cap was donned by a visibly bored Val Kilmer (Big Val and Schumacher famously didn’t get on during the making of this film). While Tommy Lee Jones (Two Face) and Jim Carrey (The Riddler) mug their way through the film as two of the most annoying villains in superhero film history.  

These problems made Batman Forever (1995) a hugely inferior sequel, but it was nothing compared to the cinematic crime that Schumacher committed two years later with Batman and Robin.  

Widely considered one of the worst superhero films ever made, the film derailed the franchise so seriously it would be more than a decade before the Caped Crusader would return to the cinema screen.  

Still, whatever the flaws, Batman Forever does feature an exploding helicopter. This occurs while Two Face attempts to steal an enormous bank safe. Using a Sikorsky helicopter, Two Face rips the vault through the bank’s wall and then tries to fly off with it.  

Fortunately, Batman is on hand. He unhooks the safe from the helicopter, then climbs onboard the chopper. Using his cape, Batman obscures the pilot’s view causing him to crash into the Statue of Liberty (even though this isn’t New York). 

Verdict 

A pretty decent explosion and display of wreckage, but you would expect that from a film that cost $100 million to make. 

Relevance to plot 

Pretty negligible really as it is more an introduction to Two Face’s crazy criminal escapades rather than a crucial plot point. Is hauling a safe out a bank via helicopter and dragging it halfway across the city the work of an evil mastermind or a showboating idiot? 

Artistic merit 

Joel Schmacher knows his action onions and the scene is handled well although if you look carefully the helicopter itself looks a little model-like. 

Exploding helicopter innovation 

First helicopter to crash into the (fake) Statue of Liberty. 

Positives 

I like the artful way the rotor blades hack into the head as the debris slowly burns its way down the Statue of Liberty’s robes. 

Negatives 

Its rather unclear how Two Face escapes from the burning debris and a 500ft fall with no superpowers to speak of apart from the ability to toss a coin and act like an inferior version of the Joker. 

Interesting fact 

As part of creating the character of The Riddler, Jim Carrey planned to shave a question mark into his hair. However, as he was appearing in court to finalise his divorce, he ultimately decided against it.