Flight Of Fury [2007]

Amazon.com

Anyone who seeks out a Steven Seagal movie has certain expectations: Bone-crunchingly brutal martial arts action; spiritual or ecological wisdom uttered in Seagal's hoarse monotone; and one long relentless scowl. Flight of Fury fails to deliver on all counts. Seagal plays an ex-military guy who's the only man who can retrieve a stolen stealth fighter. So he goes to Afghanistan, where he teams up with a sexy agent of some kind (Ciera Payton, making her cinematic debut) to shoot a lot of Afghan mercenaries and fly away. The only plausible explanation for this movie's existence is that Seagal and his producers bought some stock footage of jet fighters and decided to build a story around it. The action scenes are murky, brief, and edited to compensate for Seagal's increasing bulk. The rote dialogue--co-written by Seagal--is recycled from a dozen other action movies. And Seagal can't even muster the energy to frown, let alone scowl. This inert lump of a movie is the latest in a series of clumsy, incompetent, straight-to-video clunkers from Seagal, who is cynically squeezing every dollar he can out of his long-suffering fanbase. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews:

For a Seagal Movie, it's an improvement..........2007-11-22

If you're a fan, this is actually pretty good in comparision to some of the dreadful recent 'straight to video' efforts.

There's actually an coherent (if exceptionally dubious) plot to speak of and the production values look like they've had more than the usual £25 lavisioned upon them...

Essentially, Seagal has to steal a 'Next Gen' Stealth fighter back from a terrorist cell in Afghanistan, and there's the usual hokum along the way, but this time he actually breaks out into a trot a coouple of times!! There's a couple of heavily edited action scenes featuring him, not much voice dubbing (why, oh why do they STILL do it. Can't they just turn his mic up???) and the whole thing romps along at an OK pace...

You can tell he's putting more into this film than many of his recent static appearances. Backed up by the fact he has a little bit of fun at the end by identifying his flight call-sign as 'Bad Mojo' (A refence to his album).

For fans - well worth a look, prob the best since Black Dawn
Non fans - Average thriller for a week night in with the missus

Look up. Look Down. Look Out!.......2007-10-15

Now, we all know The Seagal has been dishing out one awful excuse for a movie after another. I can't begin to remember how many movies of his drops through my letterbox on a rapid basis (seems like every second month) and never even bother to come up to scratch or border on the vacinity of watchable. From his first direct to video effort "The Foreigner" right up to his last hard to follow nightmare "Attack Force" (which I had to watch in 3 "shoot me now" installments), The Seagal has seemingly lost all interest in making quality actioners and seems quite happy to just churn out mindless badly made drivel on a production line basis. Granted, even his old classics weren't ever going to win any oscars - but, he knew how to entertain and give the fans a good time. Now, he just seems to be taking the money and run.

However, the quality of his new flick "Flight of Fury" is a step up. It not only managed to escape the fast forward button, but actually acted as if it were a (gasp!) proper movie. Someone at Sony must have actually sat down and watched The Seagal's last few movies and gone "oh dear, did we actually send these out?" and made some kind of effort to rectify those past mistakes.

I won't bore you with the story of The Seagal having to find a stolen stealth bomber - all you need to know is "does he fight?" and "is he dubbed by a guy in his 90s?". Well, yes he does fight and the dubbing is very minimal this time around and hardly noticeable! Actually, kudos to director Michael Kueusch who seems to have been given the chance to direct the movie this time around (I don't know what happened on Attack Force, but directing didn't seem to be part of it) and a good job he does, too. The pace is sharp, the look is good and the action is plentiful. Granted, there is too much time spent on the guys back home in the command centre, but all in all Keusch does a great job. The Seagal himself is actually pretty good this time around, too. He gets to fight and is looking pretty good - not tired and bored as he seems to have been in his other recent efforts.

The rest of the cast are the usual assortment of good/bad and everything blows up in quick succession just in time for you not to notice how really bad this movie actually is! The Seagal hits everybody he meets at least once and they even manage to throw in a totally out of the blue lesbian scene, which had no relevance on the plot whatsoever. Not that I am complaining though. Sony's disc offers nothing in the way of extras except trailers for other movies you probably don't want to ever see and the picture quality is as good as you are going to get from this kind of STD movie.

All in all, a "slight" return to form, much better than his recent offerings - but nowhere near the status of his old Warner Bros. days. If you are a die hard fan (like myself dammit!) then you will have no choice but to buy, but for casual viewers out there I would suggest a rental and buy exit wounds or out for justice instead.

A FLIGHT PLAN TO FREEDOM.......2007-07-13

1) Does it have stock footage? YES and a lot of it, BUT although some of it looks really bad and although the never seem to keep track of the type of plane that is supposed to be in the scene, they manage to do some fancy editing with it and it ends up looking ok and actually fitting well into the movie and making it BETTER than it could have been had they used CGI or some other tool that would have been too expensive for them
2) Does it have voice dubbing? YES and it is annoying, but there's not so much of it and the guy actually manages to sound CLOSE to how Seagal sounds. Seagal's own voice does a lot of the talking as well and it is really cool to hear him again.
3) Does the stunt double make his appearance? YES and there's quite a lot of him as well, but considering the fact that he is better used here and that Seagal is older, fatter and slower than he used to be and that he does not have the same passion for movie making as he once did, it does make sense to have a stunt double. And he is used pretty well here. Also, Seagal does some of the action himself, just NOT the running and jumping and falling, so it's ok.

Overall this is a good movie and it does something that few of Steven Seagal's DTV movies have managed to do, it has a coherent and pretty cool storyline and it manages to keep the audience interested in the plot and story for the better part of its length. The story itself has ONE SINGLE MAJOR BAD POINT - there was no need for that part of the story in which they are supposed to wipe Seagal's character's memory because he knows too much. It doesn't make sense, it isn't explained and it only takes up about a minute at the beginning of the movie. Sure, we get to see Seagal do some cool stuff, but it's not that impressive. Also, the fact that navy and the air force BOTH get involved in a pretty straightforward mission, makes little sense and although they managed to find some cool stock footage of an airplane carrier, this part of the story is only there to make the movie longer, not better.
One cool thing though is the fact that they kept their heads on and had enough sense to say that the prototype stealth plane is based on the F-117 (the plane on the cover of the movie) and that the actual experimental stuff is technology that is ON the plane. They managed to get some cool stock footage of the F-117 and they use it impressively.

Also, the movie is not filled with silly and pointless action. Sure, there are some stupid moments like Seagal and his newly established team (later in the movie) decide to only use knives and they only do that in one encounter, five minutes later they're using grenades and machine guns, but it's ok, the action is pretty good so it's worth it. Also they make the same mistakes that they made on previous other Seagal movies and they can't maintain continuity. In one scene Seagal, driving his jeep encounters an enemy jeep and they get into a chase scene, yeah, but 30 seconds later, Seagal is being chased by another jeep. It's supposed to be the same car...but it clearly isn't.
The action is good and for the most part the movie has little action, in fact only the last part of the movie is an all out action movie, the rest is built like a thriller and for the first time in a Seagal DTV it works. They manage to create an interesting storyline and build some suspense which holds out until the end of the movie. In this movie I actually cared about what's going on with the characters and the storyline mainly because they kept it simple and uncomplicated. What's cool is that Seagal does not play the same type of retired, hidden, undercover, FBI/CIA/NSA secret agent so secret he himself does know about himself. This time (with the exception of the pointless memory wipe scene at the beginning) they manage to make his character at least a little bit realistic. What's not cool is the fact that Seagal is supposed to play the best stealth plane pilot in the world, BUT he is overweight and a little old to play THAT type of role. Despite that he does seem interested in the movie and actually manages to ACT and not bad at all in most of his scenes.

In fact this the only Steven Seagal DTV movie that made me sad when it was over and not because I saw it. Most of his DTVs make me sad to see that he could make something so bad (Attack Force), but Flight of Fury is ALMOST very good. Had the right producers been involved this movie could have easily been as good if not BETTER than most of his other movies. In fact this had the potential to be as good as his Under Siege movies and no, I'm not kidding. The last time we saw this type of quality in a Seagal movie was during the first 20 minutes of Shadow Man and I think that it is NOT a coincidence that Shadow Man and Flight of Fury are both directed by Michael Keusch. In fact I would say this guy is the best director Seagal has worked with in a very long time. Unfortunately the movie is a letdown on the producer's side who clearly didn't put the effort in to make it better than it is and that is very sad especially on something like Flight of Fury that is almost as good as anything Seagal has ever made.

YES, Flight of Fury is damn good movie when compared to his recent movies. I say it is his best DTV yet even if it does not have the production values of Into The Sun. It has a good and simple story, it has suspense, it has Seagal ACTING, it has some nice action, some cool plane scenes (yes, despite the fact that they are stock footage), it has some a nice soundtrack and it is entertaining from start to finish which is a first for ANY SEAGAL DTV (Into The Sun had very little action and the rest were a mess).

Perhaps one of the good things is the fact that the script was not originally written by Joe Halpin. Nothing against Joe, but all the stuff written originally by him was CRAP and Flight of Fury was originally written by someone else. What I believe is that the BAD parts of the movie are a result of Halpin messing with the original script.

Unfortunately the movie is close to being very good, but not quite there. The main problem is the movie's structure and production values which are both down to the producers and they clearly were not doing their jobs as well as they should have. The movie looks and feels like an 80s action movie and not the best kind, the B kind (perhaps some of this is down to this being a remake of a Michael Dudikoff movie). Had the movie had production values like Into The Sun, it might have been actually worth releasing into cinemas.

Also, although the opening credits look REALLY COOL and better that ANY Seagal DTV yet, they should and could have used something like they used on Les Chevaliers Du Ciel (The Knights of the Sky) again a movie about planes, but with AMAZING opening titles which would have suited Attack Force tremendously.

Overall, the best Seagal DTV movie yet
GOOD:
-simple and uncomplicated storyline
-cool stock footage that was intelligently used
-about 30 seconds of CGI that looks really good
-nice soundtrack
-Seagal acting and being active in the movie
-good action moments, including Seagal's.
-Seagal in a pilot uniform, looks cool.

BAD:
-voice dubbing is back
-production values are too low
-feels and looks like an 80s action movie (and we are in 2007...do the math)
-they seem to have added some stupid and pointless stuff to the original script (that of the movie Black Thunder)

REALLY good! I liked it a lot and recommend it to everyone, not just to Seagal fans.
HIS BEST DTV MOVIE IN MY HONEST OPINION.

boring.......2007-07-09

yet another pumped out stev film.

what i mean in that is they just make rubish films and hope ppl will buy them what a waiste of my money and time

Flight of Fury.......2007-07-01

The film begins with a spectacular escape from a military detention centre, whilst on the run(Seagal)prevents an out of town store robbery and then the limpness of the film starts having done some great stunts to bruntally halt the robbery he is casually led to local police's car when they arrive and sits in the back, mmmmmm really limp, the authentisity then of the whole plot along with the acting is very wooden, do yourself a favour and spare yourself over an hour and a half of poor acting and story line.

Average customer rating:

Flight of Fury [2007] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Starring: Steven Seagal , Steve Toussaint , Angus MacInnes , Mark Bazeley , and Ciera Payton
Director: Michael Keusch
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000LPR6G0
Release Date: 2007-02-20

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