The Rocketeer

Fun fact: about 20 years before he helmed Captain America: The First Avenger, Joe Johnston directed another comic-book film.

If you've seen the Mr. Plinkett Star Wars reviews, you're probably at least slightly familiar with The Rocketeer, and if you were in a movie theater between 1991 and 1996 you're probably familiar with James Horner's score. (Guy has a habit of getting his scores recycled into movie trailers: case in point, 1:00 to 1:30 of this cue from Aliens.)

It's about an aviator who stumbles across a jetpack built by Howard Hughes, but stolen by mobsters working for totally-not-Errol-Flynn.  The film takes place on the eve of WWII, and it's... well, far more lighthearted than today's superhero fare, which surprised me given that the main villain is... SPLOILERS...


Nazi James Bond.

By the way, let's just take this film as proof that Timothy Dalton actually can do one-liners, and that his uncomfortable reluctance to do so as James Bond stems from his dedication to a more serious take on the character.  Also, the "Where's your stuntman now?"/"I do my own stunts" line during the climax was one of the best meta jokes I've seen in a while. (Dalton was still technically Bond at the time this film came out, and as Bond he did considerably more of his own stunts than his immediate predecessor had.)

Anyway... our hero, Cliff Secord, can't seem to catch a break, given that over the course of the film he wrecks (at a very minimum) his plane, two gas trucks, and the rocketpack, and gets a diner shot up because, oddly, all his poor aviator buddies don't rat him out to the mob.  At the end of the film Howard Hughes gives him a new plane apparently gratis, despite the fact that Secord wound up wrecking his jetpack.  It seems like a mandated happy ending, which kind of bugs me.

Then there's the scene where Dalton's totally-not-Errol-Flynn character (Neville Sinclair) sells out his mobster buddies, leading to a scene where mobsters and the FBI are battling side-by-side against Nazis.  Again, this is totally different from the tone of today's superhero movies.  Now all of that said, at least the tone is generally consistent.

Secord's girlfriend gets a massive subplot of her own, in that she's an extra on the set of Neville's film and he starts trying to, er, pump her for information. (Hey, wait, didn't Dalton's Bond do that back in The Living Daylights? Also: Average Joe's honey gets stolen by a Hollywood star. Good thing he turns out to be a Nazi, in much the same way that Buffy's problems almost always morphed into demons she could slay.)  She ends up getting some awesome scenes towards the end when a) she realizes that all of his come-on lines have been lifted from his films, and b) starts playing along, getting him to drop his guard, before knocking him out and commenting, "I finally did a scene with Neville Sinclair."  Oh, and she's instrumental in getting the mobsters to switch sides at the end. It almost makes you forgive her blatant stupidity going back to the fancy restaurant earlier in the film so she could get captured by Sinclair.

The action scenes, especially the one at the beginning of the film, where the mobsters ditch the jetpack in Secord's hangar, could have used a better editor, and the film demands that you juggle several balls at once without really giving you any concessions... you have to keep track of Sinclair, Secord, Secord's girlfriend, Sinclair's minion Lothar, the mobsters (including the mob boss, his main enforcer, and his minions), the FBI, and Secord's mechanic, and by "keep track of" I mean "know where they are, what they know, and what they are trying to accomplish."  It's easier the second time around, but it still seems like there's a scene where the mob boss's minions are out looking for Secord's girlfriend at a time when the mob boss knows exactly where she is.

Finally, the way the hero beats the villain is exactly perfect. I have literally never seen any other film have a resolution that's both as intelligent and as brilliantly foreshadowed as the one on display here.

Bottom line: if you liked Back to the Future or The Last Starfighter, you should check this film out. Its feel-good tone is a relic of the late 80s/early 90s, and it is a tad ridiculous, but it's also good fun.  Final grade: A.