Iron Eagle

With my newfound free time, I watched '80s classic Iron Eagle. If you want to talk about movies that age well, this ain't it. If you want to talk about movies full of '80s cheese and a nonsense plot, look no further!

A quick recap of the plot - teenager and young pilot Doug Masters' application for the Air Force is rejected. His Dad, also an Air Force pilot, gets shot down in some generic, unnamed Middle Eastern country and is taken hostage. The government tries to go the diplomatic route but plans stall, which leaves Doug with only one option - stealing a fighter jet and rescuing his dad himself! Luckily, he has help from semi-retired Col. Charles "Chappy" Sinclair and his teenage buddies, who are the children of Air Force employees. They're able to steal Air Force plans and maps in broad daylight, and also schedule and fully arm two F-16 Fighter Jets for takeoff.

Without a doubt, the funniest line is when Chappy Sinclair looks at the group of teenagers and says, "Without a doubt, this is the finest planning crew I've ever had the privilege of working with." Dude, you were in the Air Force for TWENTY TWO YEARS and you're saying a bunch of teenagers did a better job?! Wow, that really says something about our Dept. of Defense.

Anyway - somehow, a teenager and a retired Colonel walk onto the airstrip and take the planes out for "some mission" and make it most of the way to the unnamed Middle Eastern country before anyone catches on. Chappy decides it's a good idea to arm Doug's plane with a Hades bomb because really - if you can trust anyone with a bomb named that, it's a high school graduate who got rejected by the Air Force.

They fly over there and blow a whole bunch of shit up - even hitting a wooden tower with bullets makes as big of an explosion as the Death Star. Also, Chappy's plane gets shot down so Doug has to land and rescue his Dad, which he pulls off and they fly home. When he turns up to get sentenced to life in prison - Chappy is there! Turns out that fishing boats in that area regularly pick up Air Force pilots floating in the water. Instead of getting sentenced to jail time, Chappy and Doug are thanked for their mission so long as they pinky swear not to tell anyone how easy it was to pull everything off. Also, Chappy recommends Doug get into the Air Force Academy and the government board approves it. Because, let's face it - if you can steal an F-16 and rescue one person by yourself, you surely deserve to do it legally for the Government.

There aren't enough thumbs in the world to appropriately point up for this film. It gets a bonus thumb for excellent music montages - especially the one with Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It." Classic film and a definite must see.