Blue Thunder Movie Review

Maverick helicopter pilots Roy Scheider and Daniel Stern test an experimental high-tech chopper that can see through walls, record a whisper, and destroy a city block. Supposedly the supercopter will ensure security during 1984 Olympics, but the same right-wing ogres who engineered the Vietnam War actually intend to use it to massacre Los Angeles minorities before the assembled worldwide media…huh? Futuristic hardware qualifies this as an sf genre pic, politics classify it as fairy tale. Satisfying aerial combat scenes nearly crash with the much-rewritten script. Inspired a short-lived TV series and a (notably more popular) rival-network imitator, Airwolf. Often misidentified as an Apache craft, the Blue Thunder is actually a French-made Aerospatiale Gazelle with design modifications.

1983 (R) 110m/C Roy Scheider, Daniel Stern, Malcolm McDowell, Candy Clark, Warren Oates; D: John Badham; W: Dan O'Bannon, Don Jakoby; C: John A. Alonzo. Nominations: Academy Awards ‘83: Best Film Editing. VHS, Beta, LV COL