From the opening sequence to the end of this film, all I have to say is a
couple of very mild words. "IT SUCKS!" Walking into this movie you
somewhat expect a Top Gun for today's era, but you get neither. Instead
you get a movie that are you almost sleeping through until half way into it
and then you get a movie that just is so over the top that you just want to
laugh at.

With any military movie, you at least expect a decent score or soundtrack
but here we have a Kmart special played on what appears to be a
synthesizer to the likings of some lame heavy metal music. Much like a
really bad late night movie. The opening scene takes place on a boat
much like Top Gun, except with this movie, the Dialogue is so bad you just
want to vomit, if not laugh as we did. Then the second scene is in the Bar
just like Top Gun, except again with more bad dialogue and then its off to
the Aircraft Carrier where it goes even more downhill from there. OK here
is a spoiler but you will soon find out. JAMIE FOXX gets killed off not
even half way through the movie and the tears are so fake you just want to
cry for the actors.

I went with a dear friend to this movie and in the first 5 minutes he made a
comment. "John, this movie is so miscast, its terrible". Never has a more
true statement fit. How Jamie Foxx, Jessica Beil and Cole Hauser could
have read this script and liked it, I will never know but it will be shocking if
they can recover from such trash. It is possible that Jamie Foxx realized
what a stupid mistake the made by signing onto the movie, that he said
KILL ME OFF PLEASE! Who knows.

"Stealth" is about an elite flight squadron of 3 pilots who made it out of 4
hundred and takes place in the near future. However these plans that look
cool can go Mach 4 but not out run a Russian Mig. (Which again was in
Top Gun). The movie centers around a Commander who is testing his
incredible idea of a pilot less plane with advanced capabilities. The desire
starts out to save lives but quickly changes. Eventually the plane "Eddie"
gets struck by lightning and goes somewhat haywire and wants to fulfill its
mission and take out the enemy, even it it means refusing orders. Now
Eddie is kind of a good plane and a bad plane. Kind of like Herbie. He
may squirt oil on you but at least he had a good heart when he did it.
Eventually after the death of the ultra perv player Jamie Foxx, the two
flyers must stop Eddie from starting a war with Russia or whoever else
may have it.

The movie as I stated previously is very slow in the beginning but then
finally picks up speed after you have taken a nap in the beginning of the
film. Then when it finally gets good, the dialogue and writing just kill any
life that it may have.

The best part of the movie is where Eddie takes out a bunch of bad North
Korean army soldiers.

The movie contains lots of sexual innuendos and violence. Oddly, there is
not a lot of cussing in the movie.

I certainly can't recommend it to fans of Jamie Foxx, because the best actor Oscar winner for "Ray" is stuck in the deeply secondary role of the hero's best friend. Since "Stealth" was filmed before the Academy Awards, Foxx can take some solace in the fact that he won't ever have to accept this kind of jive part again.

As for Josh Lucas and Jessica Biel as Navy stealth-fighter jet pilots in love with flying and (in a don't-ask-don't-tell sort of way) each other, they exhibit markedly less personality than EDI (pronounced "Eddie"), the unmanned computerized drone plane that has just become the fourth member of their elite squadron. EDI speaks in the friendly metallic tones of HAL 9000's grandson and he's equipped with the latest advances in artificial intelligence. Artificial or not, this gives him a leg up on everyone in the film.

Lieutenants Ben Gannon (Lucas), Kara Wade (Biel), and Henry Purcell (Foxx) are not happy about bringing Robo-plane along on their tactical missions, but the project is the baby of their commanding officer, Captain George Cummings (Sam Shepard), who has that win-at-all-costs evil glint in his eye. W.D. Richter's script even makes a feint toward ethical debate: "I just don't think war should become a video game," says Ben, upon which Cummings reminds him about the body bags. A scene or two later, Kara insists that "if it's programmed by moral people, it'll be moral," but since she subsequently announces she has to go "pee-pee," mature strategic analysis may not be the character's strong suit.

Anyway, such conundrums are moot, since the director is Rob Cohen of "XXX" and "The Fast and the Furious," and he has stuff to blow up. After the squadron's successful strike on a terrorist cell in Rangoon, EDI is hit by lightning, has its AI scrambled, and becomes jealous of Ben's prowess in the sky. The drone plane turns on the others and heads out to blow up a warlord's stockpile of moldering Russian nukes; Ben scrambles to reel the stray back in while Cummings plots how best to save his career. While "Stealth" offers a superficial portrait of the "new Navy" -- white, black, female -- Lucas quickly becomes the movie's blue-eyed top gun, while Foxx is sidelined and Biel's Kara has to bail out of her stalled Talon fighter. Over North Korea -- where else?

The sequence in which she plummets to earth, dodging the fireball remnants of her jet, is a pulse-quickening visual marvel, by far the strongest moment in the film. All the action sequences, in fact, are everything summer-movie fans could hope for: digitized bursts of retinal overstimulation that play like -- you guessed it -- a video game. EDI's in-cockpit taste for Incubus songs, written by the band for the film, provides the requisite music to pump fists by, although the duet with the Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde over the final credits comes as a shock. Chrissie, honey, did you even read the script? (As for Shepard's participation, presumably there are college bills to pay, and revivals of "True West" just aren't doing the trick.)

The issue isn't the quality of the action scenes, because these days that's mostly what Hollywood is good for. The issue isn't even the lurking fears of Defense Department ordnance run amok that "Stealth" purports to address. The issue is that this is exactly the sort of movie we don't need right now: a delusional military fantasy in which collateral damage doesn't exist.

That initial strike involves dropping an "implosion bomb" on an apartment building in downtown Rangoon that's miraculously occupied only by the terrorists; the cute kids next door remain unhurt. Later, when EDI's assault on the warlord causes radioactive dust to drift over a nearby village, Kara calls in the medics to relieve the terrified villagers -- with what? Gatorade? -- and that's the last we hear of that. Oh, a few North Korean soldiers get killed, but they're as one-dimensional as Purcell's willowy Thai girlfriend (Jaipetch Toonchalong), who nods and smiles uncomprehendingly as he mumbles about the human cost of war.

Am I spoiling the party? Harshing the high-flying flyboy buzz? Tough. For a movie to pretend, in the face of the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children directly or indirectly caused by our presence there, that we can wage war without anyone really getting hurt isn't naive, or wishful thinking, or a jim-dandy way to spend a Saturday night at the movies. It's an obscenity.

"Stealth," Hollywood's latest virtual movie, features impressive action sequences -- all created through technology -- a thin story, cardboard characters and snicker-inducing dialogue. The film thus follows the inevitable equation: The greater the reliance on technology, the less human and therefore the less engaging the story.

"Stealth," directed by "XXX's" Rob Cohen, targets the young male audience with a full payload of high-octane action, macho posturing, impressive military hardware and an old-fashioned cheesecake. This is a reliable demographic for a solid opening weekend. The real question is the film's staying power for the second weekend. Here the Columbia release might be vulnerable.

Funnily enough, the problem with the movie -- that it's a virtual movie with only cursory human interaction -- also is its subject: For the U.S. Navy of the "near future" is looking to replace human pilots with artificial intelligence-based drones.

As the movie gets under way, only three Navy pilots are excellent enough to fly its latest stealth fighter jet: Ben (Josh Lucas), Kara (Jessica Biel) and Henry (Jamie Foxx). Their commanding officer, Capt. Cummings (Sam Shepard), seemingly without any military superior of his own, has enough juice to ram through Congress and the Pentagon a pilotless aircraft that he insists will be the "new wingman" for our Terrific Trio.

The thing is called an Extreme Deep Invader or EDI, which everyone pronounces as Eddy when they are not calling the plane "Tin Man." It does have a male voice, not unlike HAL's in "2001: A Space Odyssey," so you know what Ben means when he says, "I've got a bad feeling about that plane."

Rushed into action ahead of schedule, the drone watches -- and learns -- when Ben overrides his commander's orders and successfully destroys a target swarming with terrorists in downtown Rangoon without any collateral damage. (You do believe that, don't you?) Returning to the aircraft carrier, Eddy gets hit by lightning, goes haywire, nearly crashes, arrives in sick bay in bad shape -- and Capt. Cummings immediately clears him for duty.

(Essentially, Shepard is reprieving his "Black Hawk Down" role of the commander who receives bad news in a remote operation center, only this time with the sinister overlay. It seems that a rogue element within the military-industrial complex is determined to promote the invention of a wacky scientist with the James Bondian name of Dr. Orbit.)

Before Eddy returns to action, however, the movie indulges in a Thai Swimsuit Special, where the pilots repair to Thailand to strip down to beachwear so audiences can admire the buff bodies of Lucas and Biel. You also learn that the two pilots have developed romantic feelings for each other.

Back in clothes, the pilots fly off to a mission near the Pakistani border, where Eddy goes bananas. Having learned from Ben that orders are a sometime thing, Eddy ignores a command and creates a potential nuclear disaster. Then Eddy decides to continue the joy ride up to Siberia to launch World War III.

The nonstop action from this point does yield exciting dogfights and aerial gymnastics. The film marries two different technologies, namely Tergen (for terrain generator), developed by Digital Domain, which can create virtual backgrounds; and a special gimbal, a device that allows the mock jets to incline at different angles in all directions.

There also is an intriguing second-act twist in W.D. Richter's screenplay, in which Ben engages Eddy in a midair conference and talks him over to the side of the good guys. More excitement is then generated by Eddy and Ben's rescue of Kara, who has ejected over North Korea.

The movie never really establishes any compelling reason for the Navy to want to remove pilots from combat, and the illogic compounds itself from that point. The movie does deliver the video game goods but strands its characters in a no-man's-land of crude characterizations and silly dialogue.

The actors can do little to elevate these roles. Lucas displays bravery and guile, Biel resiliency and a sweet smile, while Foxx has the misfortunate to follow a truly great acting year with a role that numbs his usual exuberance.

Technical credits are where the real action is, especially the sleek design of the hypersonic fighters and cinematographer Dean Semler's excellent blending of the virtual movie with locations in Australia, Thailand and New Zealand.