Film Reviews

Stealth

• Rating:
• Director: Rob Cohen
• Starring: Jessica Biel
• Details: US / 121 mins (12A).

Set in the near future, Stealth concerns itself with a fighter jet piloted by an artificial intelligence computer. In other words, the computer in charge of the plane is smart enough to adapt to situations and make complex decisions based on danger levels, threat to self, weather conditions, et al. What it doesn't have is experience of combat, so it's sent to an aircraft carrier in the Pacific to learn manoeuveres under the tutelage of human pilot aces. Unfortunately, a glitch in the matrix means the computer in charge of the jet develops a mind of its own (er, wasn't that the whole the point of the exercise?), so the human pilots are charged with out-thinking the artificial intelligence before it starts a war. While that kind of set-up suggests that Stealth is an anti-technology, anti-war kinda movie, nothing could be further from the truth. Director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, xXx) and writer W.D Richter fetishise the sleek, gleaming machinery on show here to the point where the whole show becomes akin to fighter jet porn. It's Top Gun for a new generation; worse, it's Top Gun made at a time when America's troops are engaged in a war on foreign soil, so the subtlety is of the jackhammer variety: this may well enter the Guinness Book of Records as the loudest movie ever made. Jamie Foxx loses whatever credibility he'd built up on the back of his Oscar-winning performance in Ray, while Jessica Biel is this year's Jude Law: too many movies, too little by way of quality control.

Review by Declan Burke