A year in the CAGE: Tommy Lee Jones

#52 Fire Birds

Year: 1990

Director: David Green
MPAA Rating: PG-13

Epic Co-stars: Tommy Lee Jones,

Running Time: 85 mins
Cage Time: 100%
Cage Kills/Deaths: 0
Cage Flip-outs: 3

James' Review: Let's just clear up a few things before we get started here. Nic Cage is a much better actor than Tom Cruise, Tommy Lee Jones is a much better actor than James Tolkan, and tricked out helicopters (if presented properly) can be just as cool as fighter jets. Despite all these facts, Fire Birds is a much worse movie than Top Gun. Maybe it's the fact that all my memories of Top Gun were formed before I was ten years of age, or that Nic Cage could only really be taken seriously in about 1/3 of the scenes in which he appeared in this movie, or possibly that Nic Cage (the anit-Tom Cruise) didn't ride a totally tricked out crotch rocket. We may never know. All we do know is that Fire Birds was released four years after Top Gun (giving every person on earth a chance to see it and love it) and that it desperately wanted to be Top Gun (made clear by an almost exact copy of the story line) and that it did not have any scenes with Val Kilmer (probably the only thing I would still like about Top Gun if I were to see it now).

The best of the best. Helicopter Pilot. Actor. Human. Whatever.

Jake Preston (Cage) is a hot young stud and rising star in the US Apache Combat training program. He is the best of the best and he knows it. The school has recently been chartered by the US Government to train their pilots for combat against South American drug cartels who will be flying a smaller, more nimble, Scorpion attack helicopter. That's right, drug cartels in a different hemisphere have a single helicopter and a crack pilot that will single-handedly wage war on the US military. Preston has finally met his match. But before he can solve America's drug problems, he's got some authority to challenge and some ass to chase at home...

Siskel and Ebert have already said everything there is to say (and in a vastly superior fashion) about the film itself so I'll try to say a few things they haven't. First off, all of the acting in this movie is terrible. Cage actually pulls this "terrible acting" off due to his irreverence and on-screen charm, while everyone else just ends up looking like a typical asshole failing at a never ending game of Charades. Both his irreverence and charm are perfectly summed up in an excellent scene where he takes to the flight simulator for some realistic (ie. mid level PlayStation 1 graphics) action against the best AI 1990 has to offer. But Seriously. Fire Birds deserves some respect for drawing attention to a problem so often overlooked by the US public today: Eye Dominance. People suffering from this condition often have to spend several minutes behind the wheel of a jeep equipped with a home made para scope to be cured forever.

Eye dominance: An ailment that effects one out of every one person in this country today.

I've presented here only a few of the reasons why every person on earth should eventually see this movie. While each individual part may be either laughable, stupid, embarrassing or really stupid, they all sum together to provide an experience that is but a fond memory in 2013. Fire Birds shows us a time when multiple A-list actors could be in a totally stupid movie and it didn't even matter or effect their careers. A time when someone would actually put up millions of dollars because "theoretically Top Gun with helicopters and Nic Cage should be amazing." A time when a quote from anyone with the name George Bush at the beginning of a movie would be somewhat respectable. And most importantly, a time that the whole world was stupid and nothing didn't not not matter at all. Nothing mattered at all because bad guys were exploding and Nic Cage was securing a nice piece of ass in the end. And I think we all know deep down, that is all that really matters.

A time. The time. The only time. Transcending Time.

Movie quotability:

"Sir, that was totally cool!"
"Good, because I have a pocket full of quarters."
"I AM THE GREATEST"
"Shoot 'em, blast 'em, nab 'em, grab 'em, shake 'em, bake 'em, cook 'em, clean 'em, hold 'em, broil 'em, kick 'em, nab 'em, twist 'em, ALL GONE BYE BYE!!!!"
"I'd say that I'm doing piss-perfect"
"Why'd you change?" "Less to take off." "Lets skip dinner."
"You're not touching her you filthy piece of shit."
"Snort that sucker." (Kills cocaine jet with shoulder fired rocket.)