"Firefox", while definitely dated, is a good Cold War spy thriller that falls far short of being great. Clint Eastwood plays Mitchell Gant, a burned-out Vietnam fighter pilot who's enlisted to steal a high-tech, heavily-armed, stealth Soviet fighter plane right out of its Siberian hangar. The first half of the film is a John le Carre type thriller Clint sneaking into Moscow, assuming a Soviet pilot's identity, and making his way to the experimental Firefox fighter craft. The second half, when he climbs into the cockpit of the Firefox, is where the real fun begins.
While entertaining, the film isn't particularly great apart from Clint's gritty performance as Mitchell Gant, none of the other actors manage to stand out in any way. The jet fighter sequences also haven't stood the test of time they looked great in the Eighties, but now they just look dated and unrealistic. Certain scenes in the film are little more than padding, buying breathing room between action scenes and doing little else. There's enough tension and action scattered throughout the film to make `Firefox' fun, but there's much better Cold War movies than this (`The Russia House' and `The Hunt for Red October' easily come to mind), and there's certainly much better Clint Eastwood movies than this. B-/C+
While entertaining, the film isn't particularly great apart from Clint's gritty performance as Mitchell Gant, none of the other actors manage to stand out in any way. The jet fighter sequences also haven't stood the test of time they looked great in the Eighties, but now they just look dated and unrealistic. Certain scenes in the film are little more than padding, buying breathing room between action scenes and doing little else. There's enough tension and action scattered throughout the film to make `Firefox' fun, but there's much better Cold War movies than this (`The Russia House' and `The Hunt for Red October' easily come to mind), and there's certainly much better Clint Eastwood movies than this. B-/C+