The Dark Knight

This is a difficult film to tackle. As the most revered superhero ever made, it occupies a sacred place in the affections of a lot of lonely, maladjusted young men who spend far too much time on the internet. 

As such, reviewers who are anything other than slavishly fawning towards the film can expect to be besieged by an angry social media mob baying for virtual blood. 

Let it not be said though that Exploding Helicopter ever cowered in the face of anonymous keyboard warriors. So, let's dive in and cover the basics.

The Dark Knight is the follow up to 2005's 'gritty' (surely one of the most popular movie buzzwords of the Noughties) reboot of Batman.

Picking up from Batman Begins, the caped crusader's campaign to curtail the criminal capers (we'll always have a soft spot for Sixties Batman) of Gotham's residents seem to have gone quite well.

The criminal elite of the city are feeling distinctly threatened, so make the dubious decision of recruiting the Joker (Heath Ledger in his last full role) to help get rid of Batman. It probably seemed a good idea at the time, but, as it turns out, hiring a mentally unstable psychopath comes with its own set of issues.

Gary Oldman plays Commissioner Gordon, a maverick cop who merrily ignores due process, (although perhaps not in the same way as his role in Leon) in his attempts to bring the criminals of the city to justice.

As the film develops, we follow the District Attorney, Harvey Dent as he works with both Batman and Commissioner Gordon to try to bring Gotham back to a reasonable level of street crime and anti-social behaviour. The film then follows the plots and plot-thwarting of the Joker and Batman respectively, until we get to the main finale, a rooftop showdown.

As it turns out, the finale is not the actual finale at all. Instead we're treated to another ending (a phenomenon best embodied by Jackson's 'The Return of the King', a film with more endings than a choose your own adventure book) which ties up the story with Two-Face and sets us up for the series finale.

The film can be thought of as Batman's attempts to plan for his succession. He recognises that he cannot always go on as the illegitimate (but righteous) force of justice in the City and also knows that his successor will need more authority than being simply anointed by the Batman.

The moral difficulties around unaccountable power are acknowledged (if not adequately dealt with) in a plot element around almost Murdochian-levels of phone tapping within the city by Batman. It's a hell of a lot more nuanced than say, 24, in its 'its not wrong if you do it for the right reasons' attitude but is by no means the last word on the subject.

None of this is to say its a bad film, there's so much in there, with some very beautiful shots and solid performances (although I don't think I'll ever engage with the Bale growl properly). Directed by Christopher Nolan, the film really benefits from a determination to do as many stunts and effects shots 'live' as possible.

This culminates in an excellent protracted car chase where the Joker is attacking a police convoy in the hopes of killing Harvey Dent. The whole sequence is superb and includes both a personal movie highlight for me, the flipping of a lorry, and the all important helicopter explosion.

With his control over the route to be taken by the convoy, the Joker manages to plan for the possibility of his plans being thwarted by an apparently unarmed helicopter. As the chase continues, the helicopter drops lower and lower to follow the action. Meanwhile, disposable henchmen string cables across the street between two high rises. The inevitable occurs and the helicopter plunges to earth a tangled mess, before the all-important explosion.



Artistic merit

The actual destruction of the helicopter is nicely teased out. The cables go out in plenty of time for the audience to anticipate the helicopter's impending doom.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Flying into what are essentially tripwires is a credit to the devious mind of the writers.

Number of exploding helicopters

One

Positives

Nearly all the film in truth. This is excellent story telling with a great cast and a great eye to atmosphere and tone.

Negatives

There is a strange disconnect between the two story strands of the Joker and Two Face. So much energy goes into ending the Joker's story that it feels a bit of a challenge to try to crank up the intensity again to get a similarly powerful resolution to the Two Face story.

Favourite quote

"Do you want to see a magic trick?"

Interesting fact

Several scenes were filmed on IMAX film stock meaning those sections of the film are shown at a much higher resolution. If you're looking for them, these scenes/shots are easy to pick out.  And were captivating in an IMAX screen.

The 6th Day

In the wrong film Arnold Schwarzenegger is like a raisin in a bowl of milk.

You may like milk. You may like raisins. But no matter how long you ponder the contents of your bowl you’re only ever going ask yourself what the hell is that doing there?.

Put Arnold Schwarzenegger in the right film, let’s say Predator, Commando, Red Heat or The Terminator, and he’s an effective actor. Put him in the wrong one and he sticks out like a pork sausage at a Jewish buffet.

Sometimes that ‘cock in a hen house’ casting can work. Much of Kindergarten Cop’s comedy comes from the fact Arnie was the world’s most unlikely children’s teacher. Unfortunately as Arnie’s star rose he found himself too often in settings utterly unsuited to his skills.

The 6th Day is one of those films. It requires us to believe Arnie is a normal Joe. A guy with a job, family, and who’s main worry in life is when he’s going to be able to get some hanky panky with his wife (Not something we now know Arnie ever worried about in real life, but hey let’s not go there).

In the finest traditions of Hitchcock, fate and circumstance conspire to put Arnie at the centre of a gigantic conspiracy. Banned technology is being used to clone wealthy and important people effectively offering them the prospect of immortality.

With another actor this film might have worked better. Unfortunately, Arnie come with too much baggage. He spends most of the film being pursued by villains led by Michael Rooker. Arnie though is someone you expect to take the fight to the enemy at the first sign of trouble.

And while the film is essentially an action film it does attempt some commentary on the ethics of genetic cloning. Unfortunately, giving Schwarzenegger great mouthfuls of dialogue about the morality of science is not a good idea. He delivers the lines, but they tumble from his mouth like rubble from a collapsing building.

Fortunately for us, The Governator plays a helicopter pilot. As the film is set in the future this isn’t just an ordinary helicopter. The rotors can be disengaged and jets activated so it can rocket forward like a plane.

But anyway, Rooker and his goons have taken Arnie’s family hostage. Arnie arranges to pick them up by helicopter in exchange for vital information he’s stolen. However, Rooker intends to eliminate all the loose ends in the conspiracy. When the futuristic helicopter comes in to land Rooker shoots it down using a laser weapon.

The chopper explodes and crashes to the ground where it explodes again. Unfortunately for Rooker Arnie isn’t aboard as he suspected a double cross and was flying the chopper by remote control.

Artist merit

I felt a bit sorry for director Roger Spottiswoode. He wants to deliver a decent chopper fireball but is required by the script not to blow the helicopter up to much. That’s because Rooker has to be able to see that Arnie wasn’t aboard and that he’s been double crossed. So there’s lots of flame and explosions but the chopper remains strangely intact despite all the pyrotechnics.

Exploding helicopter innovation

First known destruction of a remote controlled helicopter.

Michael Rooker: Permanently strangulated

Positives

I love Michael Rooker. Maybe I’m watching the wrong type of films, but he seems to have disappeared from view in recent years. Rooker’s got this coiled intensity that he brings to every role. I also love his voice. It sounds a bit choked and emotional. A bit like he’s being strangulated.

Negatives

As if the casting of Schwarzenegger wasn’t bad enough in this film, the cloning plot requires Arnie to share scenes of dialogue with himself. Double the torture.

Favourite quote

Arnie: “I might be back.”
Shop assistant: “He’ll be back.”

Interesting fact

Kevin Costner could have been the lead in this film. He turned down the role as it conflicted with other films he was working on.

The 6th Day was originally called The Sixth Day, but was renamed to avoid confusion with The Sixth Sense. I know. They really do think we’re that stupid.

Review by: Jafo

Still want more? Then listen to the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on The 6th Day. Listen via iTunes, Player FM, Stitcher, Acast or right here

Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen

The shape-shifting robots and their human sidekicks are back in this overblown, empty-headed, dogs dinner of a sequel. Once again, the Autobots are fighting the Decepticons to protect Witwicky who has accidentally acquired ancient secrets, after touching a shard of the destroyed Allspark, that are key to the survival of the human race and harvesting the sun qtyroihafosihdfaifhdrty3454563....... 

Oh, forget it. It’s easier to type randomly on a keyboard than try and explain the plot. Then again, that might be just how this atrocious script was written. 

If you thought the first film was bad, you underestimate the turd producing qualities of director Michael Bay. Here, the creator of ‘Bayhem’ manages the seemingly impossible feat of dumbing down one of the dumbest films ever made. 

In the place of a coherent plot and genuine drama we have slow motion, lens flare, and an epilepsy-inducing editing style. The attempts at comedy are incredibly lame, and the introduction of two wisecracking Autobots reach Jah Jah Binks levels of misjudgement. Not even the copious and frequent flashes of Megan Fox’s cleavage can salvage this mess. 

Yet, despite an almost universal critical panning, the film made $836 million worldwide, and spawned another sequel. Bay is even in final negotiations to make a fourth. You idiots get the films you deserve.

Why do we put ourselves through the torture of watching this garbage? Exploding helicopters of course, and at least Bay has the good sense to include four.

The first fireball involves the Decepticon Demolisher, a huge construction vehicle that is uncovered in Shanghai. The military attempt to take him down using two Sikorsky Blackhawks. Demolisher manages to catch one of the helicopters by the tail. He breaks it in two and flips it out of camera shot.

The second and third choppers go down in quick succession. During a fight with the Decepticons in the deserts of Petra, we see two damaged choppers crash through palm trees into the desert sands. There is not much of a fireball, but the rotor blades hack nicely into the sand as they grind to a burning halt.

The last chopper is destroyed so quickly that if you blink you could miss it. Decepticon leader The Fallen, has clambered on top of a huge pyramid that contains a Sun Harvester (don't ask) and uses his telekinetic abilities to attract all the tanks and planes to him. Amongst the collection of vehicles that smash against the pyramid is a Sikorsky Blackhawk that slams against the side of the structure and bursts into flame.

Artistic merit

For most directors, the inclusion of a chopper fireball is a set piece to be lingered over. The denouement to an adrenaline fuelled action sequence. To Bay, they are nothing more an afterthought. Something he gives no more thought to, than adding a couple of pretty girls to a crowd scene.

Two of the chopper fireballs happen in a flash with the minimum of fuss or the chance for the viewer to linger over the wreckage. The action is just so busy the explosions become redundant.

Exploding helicopter innovation

First known use of telekinesis to destroy a chopper? To be honest if you haven’t seen a giant robot smash up a helicopter you haven't watched the first film.

No of exploding helicopters

4

Do passengers survive?

In the double helicopter explosion in the Egyptian desert all four passengers emerge virtually unscathed from the downed Blackhawks despite crashing into the ground from a great height. Sand is very helicopter friendly apparently.

Positives

Megan Fox has a nice ass.

Negatives

If the Transformers are supposed to live unobtrusively amongst us as cars, planes and washing machines they spend a remarkable amount of time casually strolling about in their shiny 30ft high finery loudly fighting each other and blowing things up.

Favourite quotes

"We got lost. We tried to get bigger. It's what happens to sequels. It's like, how do you top the first one? You've got to go bigger. Michael Bay went so big that it became too big." Shia LaBeouf

"The real fault with Transformers 2 is that it ran into a mystical world. When I look back at it, that was crap." Michael Bay

Interesting fact

The writing team of Rovert Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Ehren Kruger were paid $8million dollars to come up with this convoluted boloney. Probably the biggest waste of money since producers shot £75 million making the Affleck-Lopez disaster Gigli.

Review by: Neon Messiah

Three Kings

I was talking to a friend the other day and saying that I really needed to get more war movies on the site. Any post-Vietnam war film has got to be a rich source of helicopter explosions.

So with fortuitous timing Three Kings (1999) turned up on TV. It’s set just after the first Gulf War in 1991. A ceasefire is in place and the coalition forces are getting ready to return home.

As they administer the surrender of Iraqi troops four soldiers come into possession of map detailing a buried stash of stolen gold. With a return to the drudgery of their day jobs the soldiers decide that liberating the bullion will be more rewarding than liberating Kuwait.

The four soldiers - played by George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, and Spike Jonze – head out into the desert to track down the gold. Along the way they have run-ins with the remnants of the Iraqi army, freedom fighters and a journalist intent on filing at least one decent story.

Now I always love watching films to see how they attempt to slip something into the story that will later turn out to be key to the plot. Take for example Die Hard which, alongside beginning with a near flawless piece of character exposition, explains why Bruce Willis spends the rest of the film running around in bare feet.

At their worst these types of plot devices are ball-achingly painful. Usually when the director doesn’t trust the audience to pick up on the detail and draws out attention to it with all the subtlety of a knee-capping.

Fortunately the one in Three Kings, whilst by no means perfect, is certainly at the superior end of the scale and, most excitingly for me, central to the films helicopter explosion.

So in an early scene we see the four mismatched soldiers driving out into the desert in a truck. A couple of them are goofing around in the back trying to shoot American footballs which they’re throwing out the back while Ice Cube and Spike Jonze argue about the merits of black quarterbacks.

The plausibility of the scene has already been set-up by conversations earlier in the film about how little action they’d seen as part of the conflict. And with Spike Jonze’s white trash cracker character established you can believe it when he straps an explosive to one of the footballs that he throws out the back.

While the scene makes sense within its self, it’s too distinctive to for you to think the exploding footballs won’t make a reappearance later. Sure enough it does when one of the exploding balls is dropped down a ventilation shaft.

Is that the last we’ve seen them of them though? No. Because when an Iraqi helicopter attacks their position. Ice Cube takes to the roof of the building they’re in armed with one of the exploding footballs which he pitches at the cockpit of the chopper. Touchdown!



Artistic merit

Director David O. Russell doesn’t fumble the ball. He goes the whole ten yards with this helicopter explosion.  Slow motion, multiple angles of the explosion and then when the shattered fuselage crashes into the ground it blows up again. I have nothing but the highest praise for how Russell lingers over destruction of this chopper.

Exploding helicopter innovation

You not seriously telling me you’ve seen another film where they’ve used an exploding American football to blow-up a helicopter are you?

Positives

This is one of those rare beasts – an action film which is both fun and intelligent. The premise of the plot has a lot in common with Kelly’s Heroes. But the plot’s always got a new twist that it’s ready to throw at you to keep you interested. The scripts also got a nice line in subversive humour.

I particularly liked how the political context of the Gulf War is cleverly used in this film. With the civil divisions between the Shia population and Sunni ruling elite adding both a dramatic element to the plot but also providing a subtle commentary on the consequences of this conflict on the Iraqi people themselves.

Negatives

You know what I really can’t think of one.

Favourite quote

“What was that?”
“I rigged a football with C4 sir.”
“Why would you do that?”

Interesting fact

The plot to Three Kings has more than a passing resemblance to Kelly’s Heroes starring Clint Eastwood. Interestingly the part was originally intended for Clint Eastwood but director Russell wanted a younger actor. Nicholas Cage was also considered before Clooney was cast.

Review by: Jafo

Still want more? Then check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on Three Kings. Listen on iTunes, Podomatic, Stitcher or YourListen

Resident Evil: Afterlife

Is Milla Jovovich the female Rutger Hauer?

With Blade Runner, the blond-haired Dutchman burned an indelible image into the mind of viewers as the psychopathic replicant Roy Batty. Since then, the sometime Guinness salesman has ground out a living in unexceptional sci-fi flicks by trading on the diminishing cache of his most famous role. 

In that sense, Hauer’s career provided a useful template for Milla. She followed an early appearance in the acclaimed sci-fi epic The Fifth Element with the middling Ultraviolet and the soon-to-be five strong Resident Evil franchise.

Exploding Helicopter would like to think that, 15 years from now, ‘MaJo’ will still be ploughing away in the genre, and widely recognised as the undisputed queen of low budget sci-fi.

All of which brings us to Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010), the fourth entry in the zombie-killing series. Once again, Alice (Milla Jovovich) is out to destroy the Umbrella corporation only this time she must do it while seeking out other survivors who are heading for the virus free outpost of Arcadia.

Afterlife makes little allowance for viewers who might be joining the franchise at this point. The film takes a smattering of characters from earlier films, borrows liberally from The Matrix, The Thing and Dawn of the Dead, before sprinkling it all with enough Resident Evil lore to keep the fan-boys happy. In many ways, the whole thing feels like it’d been bolted together in an Umbrella laboratory. 

But despite the derivative thrills, there are points to enjoy. Action cinema is sadly short of female leads and Jovovich, all impassive cool, remains a great, kick-ass hero. And while there’s little originality, franchise supremo Paul W S Anderson gives the action a slick and shiny gloss. 

So, to the exploding helicopter action. And there are a couple to report. The first occurs during the big action set piece that opens the film. 

Alice infiltrates an Umbrella base in Japan in a particularly Matrix-lite sequence. Umbrella’s evil mastermind Wesker (Shawn Roberts) escapes in a cool double rotor-bladed helicopter which looks a bit like a stealth fighter plane. Unbeknownst to him, Alice has sneaked onboard. The two shape up to have a show down, but Wesker is a bit of a dim-witted evil mastermind. He fails to properly engage the autopilot and the chopper goes crashing into the side of a cliff before he and Alice can get it on.

We then have to wait for the end of the film before we get any further chopper fireball action. Having bested Wesker in the film’s climatic fight, Alice locks him into a massive laboratory come warehouse. Only she locks him in with some of those cool choppers we saw earlier.

Flying off he thinks he’s outfoxed his opponents at the last. Using his patented ‘evil mastermind remote control unit’ he sets off the self-destruct system on his base. Only in a seemingly pointless piece of chicanery, Alice has put the explosives onboard his craft. Cue a predictable moment of confusion as Wesker hears the countdown timer begin. 

Artistic merit

We can’t say we were impressed by the helicopter explosions in this. We barely see the first one and must content ourselves with an impressive amount of burning wreckage. Then again, with 70 minutes of the film still to run, Alice and Wesker clearly have to survive this conflagration. 

Exploding helicopter innovation

Not great. First known destruction of a helicopter by a human zombie mutant.

Number of exploding helicopters

Two.

Do passengers survive?

Yes, both Alice and Wester survive the first exploding helicopter. It’s also possible Wester also survives the second explosion as some eagle-eyed viewers claim to have seen a parachute falling following the explosion. With one eye commendably fixed on the future of the franchise director Paul W S Anderson wisely keeps his options open for the next film.

Positives

The ever-enjoyable Kim Coates plays Bennett - a slimy film producer who is one of the survivors that Alice meets. A specialist in sleazebags, Coates gets to kill a couple of people in particularly callous fashion. As usual, it’s a nice turn and you just wish he’d had a few more scenes to work in.

Negatives

Jovovich adopts a croaky dead pan voice when she’s plays Alice. A bit like she’s trying to do a Clint Eastwood ‘Man With No Name’ type drawl. Sometimes it works, a lot of the time it really grates.

Favourite quote

“Nice landing.”

“Technically, I think it’s called crashing.”

Interesting fact

Much like the T-virus that the Resident Evil world revolves around, this film franchise refuses to die. This, the fourth in the series, is the highest grossing film of the franchise. Unsurprisingly a fifth film is slated for an autumn release in 2012. Two further CGI-only spin-off films have also been produced - Resident Evil: Degeneration and Resident Evil: Damnation.

Review by: Jafo

The A Team

You'd have thought the makers of The A Team (2010) had pulled their trousers down and taken a dump on the faces carved into Mount Rushmore, such is the opprobrium heaped on this film.

Now I loved TV series when I was a kid, but that doesn't mean I can't recognise it's flaws in this Eighties cultural landmark. Formulaic, and often silly to the point of farce, the series required not so much a suspension of reality as a complete detachment from it. 

How else could tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition be fired without by our heroes without once injuring, letting alone killing, someone?

So, when Exploding Helicopter reads complaints about this film's infamous flying tank scene, we say it's no more ridiculous than being imprisoned in a warehouse with a old tractor and a welding torch. Not once, but every single week.

Don't get Exploding Helicopter wrong. We're not about to launch a full scale defence of this film. The film is far from perfect, but the idea that it's an act of sacrilegious desecration is to assign an utterly undeserved status to the source material.

The film signals it's intent right at the start and you either buy in then or it's best to just abort. Interestingly for us the sequence is the key one for us as it includes a helicopter explosion.

Having requisitioned an old chopper from a hospital, the newly assembled A Team attempt to affect their escape from Mexico. They're pursued by some corrupt army officers in another helicopter.

Unfortunately, the old air ambulance the A Team are in has no weapons, so all they can do is take evasive action. This involves an aerodynamically impossible 360 roll along with some other equally implausible manoeuvres avoid some missiles.

Having used up all their tricks, it looks like the A Team's chopper is about to blown from the sky. But unbeknownst to the Mexicans pursuing them, they've now crossed into US airspace. An American jet fighter appears out of nowhere and blows the pursuing helicopter to smithereens.

Artistic merit

We enjoyed the helicopter chase sequence even if it borrowed it's aeronautic acrobatics from Blue Thunder and Die Another Day.

The explosion was well executed but it's incredibly brief and director Joe Carnahan cuts straight to the whooping reactions of the A Team in the other helicopter.

Exploding helicopter innovation

While the fighter plane's missiles are the direct responsible for the helicopter's destruction, the ultimate cause was clever use of international airspace. First known usage as far as I can tell.

Number of exploding helicopters

One.

Do passengers survive?

No. If we were talking about the tv series the answer would obviously be, 'but of course'. However, unfortunately for everyone in the chopper we're no longer in the 80s.

Positives

I'll admit I'm struggling with this one. All told this is a pretty derivative actioner. Nothing's too great, nothing's too bad.

Negatives

Liam Neeson. Does the man ever enjoy himself? He always looks pained in everything he appears in. Every time he smiles it looks like he's been cued to do it by someone shoving a hand up his backside.

Favourite quote

"Overkill is underrated."

Interesting fact

The script for The A Team was written by Skip Woods who is quickly carving out a reputation as a guarantee of exploding helicopter action. He also wrote the screenplays for X Men Origins: Wolverine and Swordfish which both feature helicopter explosions and chopper sequences.

Review by: Jafo

The Day After Tomorrow

The Day After Tomorrow (2004)…or The Day Hollywood Cashed In On All That Angsty Eco-Concern.

Twentieth Century Fox, never slow to recognise a cash-cow, cannily exploited growing popular sentiment on global warming by creating a movie specially designed to highlight the key concerns of green-minded people. Naturally, having seen Independence Day and Godzilla, they decided Roland Emmerich was just the man to handle such a sensitive job.

(Incidentally, the explosion-happy German later made 2012, in which pretty much everything gets destroyed, but for me the most upsetting aspect of that movie remains how closely John Cusack’s tiny mouth resembles a dog’s bum.)

So, in a nutshell: a second Ice Age is on the way and only Dennis Quaid knows it. That’s despite snowstorms in India, killer hailstones the size of medicine balls in Tokyo and tornadoes in Los Angeles. Which, at the very least, ought to have given other people a hint.

This time Dennis is a paleoclimatologist, if you’re interested. But, regardless of whether he’s buff and desert-sweaty (Flight of the Phoenix), cadaverous and louche (Wyatt Earp) or, as here, freezing his nuts off in full action mode, the dead-eyed Texan always brings an identical Will this do? quality to his roles. If acting were colour-coded, he’d be beige.

Early on, he’s repeatedly portrayed as a maverick figure, shocking high-level (even Presidential) meetings with his profound geo-revelations, but for all the tension raised he could be reading a prescription for haemorrhoid cream.

Still, that’s largely missing the point. Along with Aaron Eckhart, Quaid is one of those handy go-to men for action movies where the budget has already been spanked on special effects and the studio doesn’t want an actual personality getting in the way of all that expensive CGI.

Our multi-helicopter crash scene occurs just as the world’s weather systems collapse into freezing, snow-flurried chaos. It is also set in Scotland, which poses an obvious problem: how would they be able to tell the difference? (In fact, as the first chopper hits the ground, if you press pause you can just make out a scrawny figure wearing a short-sleeved Celtic shirt and carrying a can of Tennants in the background.)

Three RAF helicopters, helmed by the type of plummy-voiced Englishmen never heard of outside modern Hollywood movies, are heading for Balmoral Castle to evacuate the royals. But it suddenly starts to get a bit demmed perky out there, dontcha know, to the tune of minus 150 degrees.

One pilot cries out: “Bladdy fuel lines are starting to freeze, sah!” Then the rotor blades themselves quickly ice up and stop turning. A second pilot, sounding even posher, bleats: “Come on, you bar-stard!”

All three copters then spin in descending circles before crashing down onto the very soft snow at speed. Obviously, given all the fuel is frozen solid, they don’t actually explode. Clearly aware that this non-spectacle looks boring, the effects boys instead have the choppers send up huge jets of spraying snow and even have one of them come crashing directly towards the screen. As a final garnish, one of the pilots opens his door to peek out and we see him actually freeze solid before our eyes. Lummy.



Exploding helicopter innovation

It’s a decent idea. The notion of the weather suddenly turning so cold it can literally halt the rotors of a helicopter might be scoffed at as just another Wednesday by vest-wearing Neds in the Gorbals, but for the rest of us it’s a novel concept.

However, the only sweat and tears generated in putting this scene together most likely belonged to a few over-weight, under-deodorised geeks wedged in front of mammoth computers on a LA studio lot. None of it looks even remotely real, there’s zero sense of actual danger and the impossibly close angles scream out CGI botch-work.

Number of exploding helicopters

Three. (Or none, depending on how pedantic you’re feeling.)

Positives

Forget the encroaching ice, the real danger here is getting buried in clichés. Action movie buffs with a love of the obvious can sit back and relax. Cute dog. ‘Character’ vagrant. Baldy kid with cancer who makes it. Best buddy of hero who doesn’t make it. Cynical politician who admits he ‘got it wrong’. Unlikely teen crush that works out. Rousing orchestral music at the slightest provocation. It’s all here.

Negatives

Quaid – who could mangle the finest lines - is given some appalling eco-platitudes to spout. In fairness, even De Niro would struggle with such fare as: “Our climate is fragile. At the rate we're polluting the environment and burning fossil fuels, the ice caps will soon disappear.” Hearing Quaid deliver such lines, you’ll want to set fire to the nearest forest.

Interesting fact

To promote this eco-movie and its save-the-planet mantra, the leading cast members were flown, separately, around the globe on private jets, monstering up enough fossil fuel to power a small country for a year. But hey, it’s all about the message.

Review by: Chopper