Firefox (1982)

Deeds represents. A clear and present danger of

national security of the United States.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to Clear and

Present Dues, the podcast that stares down cinematic thrillers

with the intensity of Clint Eastwood eyeing up an empty

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I am one of your hosts, Mike Dunbar, and I'm joined here by

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appreciated. And today we are gathered here

to discuss the 19 We are ladies and gentlemen, we are Gareth

here today to get through this thing called life to discuss the

we. Can't bury the Firefox, not

prison. We're here to discuss the the

1982 Spy fighter jet thriller movie Firefox directed by Clint

Eastwood, starring Clint Eastwood, based on the book by

Craig Thomas. This is I.

I asked Chachi PT to to prepare some remarks for me just to see

what happens and they are terrible.

Here we go. Today we're strapping into a

Firefox 1882 flick where Clint Eastwood not only directs but

also plays a Vietnam that tasked with stealing the Soviet Union's

most advanced fighter jet. Get ready for a tense mission

behind enemy lines, questionable Russian accents, and enough Cold

War paranoia to give you frostbite.

Jesus Christ, the frostbite. And what does that even mean?

That's. Bad.

That's cool. Yeah.

Should we? Oh, I did have.

I did have. One thing to talk about before

we get too far into this, which was full full of bands on our

episodes on Spotify. Now for a little while I've been

putting little user polls and they don't get many votes or

anything. But I have had two votes on one

of my polls, which was who is the best Jack Ryan and I gave

all the options including the correct answer, Harrison Ford.

And it was a 5050 tie between Harrison Ford and who do you

think it would be as the as the other person who might be the

other 50%? Your options are Alec, Alec

Baldwin, Ben Affleck, Chris Pine and John.

John Krasinski. Yeah.

Jim from the office. Who do you think the other one

is? Well, it's not going to be Chris

Pine. It is Chris Pine.

Somebody out there. Somebody out there thinks the

best Jack Ryan is Chris Pine from the movie Jack Ryan, Shadow

Recruit, directed by Kenneth Branagh.

Have we not been? Clear enough?

With this podcast, do I need to need to get a formal statement

about we Stan Harrison Ford in this house?

Harrison Ford is a fucking hero in this house.

Bloody hell. I'm I'm I'm essentially that

someone did that as a as a as a hilarious joke.

And I'm sure if that person wants to own up, I invite them

to leave a comment on on the Spotify and just let me know

what was going through your head.

You could have your reasons. I haven't seen the movie for a

long time, so it might actually be better than I remember.

I've actually never seen the films.

It's it's the one Jack Ryan property I've never seen.

So, so certainly wasn't the evil at first.

The play Firefox, the most devastating killing machine ever

built. The weapon system is one of the

most advanced ever conceived with a thought guided thought

control arsenal on board the plane.

If the Soviets can mass produce it, it would change the.

Structure of our world The man Mitchell Gantt, the most daring

US fighter pilot ever to fly a plane.

So I don't one of you think I have.

A chance in the world on this office.

Don't say anything. Just fly the damn plane.

Steel, Firefox and can you fly that plane?

This is what most of the movie is is.

These are conversations in Malta movies.

Great mother of car he's I'm speaking to the individual who

has stolen the property of the OSSR.

We're getting more royal treatment.

You will not make it to wherever you are going.

Let's see what this baby can do. Captain, he's coming straight

in. I don't.

Know what it is, but I'm the sitting duck.

It's like the last 20 minutes of the movie.

They're just going to show us the whole climax of the movie.

Yeah, and it's not smoke. I boxing well.

That's it. We might as well all go home.

We don't know. The hell we don't know.

They got him. Aubrey.

Yeah, I don't know. We don't know.

They don't know. I don't know.

Nobody knows. They could mean they.

Didn't get it? The Benejacerat mothers know.

In one of the most incredible undercover operations in

history. In history, like it happens.

In history in history, good God, this is you can you can kind of

you can kind of get away with the hunt for October saying huh,

this actually happened, but people tell you it's bullshit

kind of thing. But with with with this all all

this. No his historically no one still

the Russian super plane that never existed.

Yeah, well, this is it. So the thing about some marine

operations that by their very nature, they're extremely

sneaky, beaky and nobody knows what happens, I would see.

But with the fighter jet, like there's a small, there's a small

Garrison town just outside there.

So. So it's all like, it's all like

you can steal a plane and then have it not like not make music.

There's a subject of a different movie that came out just before

this, which is about a different Soviet fighter jet, Foxhound.

The guy, Yeah, the guy who literally flew to Japan to

defect. Yes, that's it.

Yeah, exactly. And they made and they made a

movie about that and steal the plans for it.

And he literally got shout outs in the book it references don't.

Haven't spoken to him. Because, of course, they're

buddies. Yeah, like, because he's been

briefed by him and stuff like that.

And it's like, it does add a bit of veracity to the book, which I

enjoyed, by the way. Not quite sure if the book or

the film were bleaker. That's a good, that's a good

segue into, I think, general impressions of the movie.

I hadn't seen the movie. Well, I thought I hadn't seen

the movie before. And it's probably worth pointing

out at this juncture as well that this is a listener request.

Jim from Cramlington wanted us to cover this and I had to bump

into the all weekend. So friend of the friend of the

podcast. Podcast Jim coming in clutch

with. A big thing.

Yeah. So.

And I was chatting to him about about doing this, and I said

because I'd watched it by then, and I said I didn't, I hadn't

remembered ever seen it before. And the name didn't really ring

a bell too much. But then in the last 20 minutes,

it like suddenly unlocked like a cold memory.

And I was like, I have seen this.

I've seen this at like when I was like in my teens on like Sky

Cinema, like on a Saturday morning at some point.

And then just and just watch it like 20 minutes.

This movie advertises itself. And you saw in the trailer there

that it's like this big action. He's like swinging fists.

It's the intercut every couple of seconds with the jet flying.

That's not what this movie is like, though.

This movie is like, in broad terms, like general sort of

vibes. It's like it's a really, it's a

paranoid Cold War movie with a really like a lonesome, damaged,

lonely main character. He's out of his depth, like

immediately. Completely, yeah.

It goes around telling everyone he's like the only person on the

world to can fly this plane. But but that's not, that's,

that's his, like, wheelhouse. But he's not in his wheelhouse

for, like, most of the movie. Like most of the movie.

He's the world's least successful, like spy.

Yeah. And it's all in the dark and

it's all like these drab places. And he's like, you know, like

he's, he goes to the airport. He's in a hotel room.

He's in the back of a van. He's in someone's farmhouse.

He's like, it's always he's. In an office somewhere.

He's in a toilet. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's not until like an hour and 15 minutes into the movie where

you finally see the jet and he's in the jet.

And then for the last like 25, half an hour, then yeah, yeah,

he's like, he's in his own. He's doing his thing.

But you guess like 75 minutes of him just being like, not good,

not good at this. And and it's, it's really weird.

And I did see some like revisionist takes online of I

couldn't speak to like how it was taken at a time.

I think. I think it got like quite high

racing from like Roger Ebert thought it was really thrilling,

really good, all that kind of stuff.

Ronald Reagan loved the movie. Holy shit, no.

Yeah. Ronald Ronald Reagan loved it. 2

thumbs up for me. Which is weird.

It's about Reagan. Thumbs up.

Yeah, which is kind of weird because it's about it's whilst

whilst he is like doing the red, white, blue for Uncle Sam and

he's been called out retirement to do one last mission kind of

thing. It starts with him being like

really in a bad way from the unresolved PTSD trauma from his

time in Vietnam. And you see this like flashback

of him in a bamboo cage being carried along and and he has and

he's always he's some it's mostly if he breaking out into

like cold sweats and shaking and having panic attacks and stuff.

So the. Book is crazy with that.

By the way, the book is absolutely crazy with his

flashbacks and stuff. Notice of the film calls it a

delayed stress reaction. Yeah, I call that.

I think that's. That's what we had, man, because

by that point, post traumatic stress is 1.

I was definitely going to get diagnosed thing right.

I'd say as far as reviews as well go, quickly circle back to

the book Firefox. Arthur Haley said an excellent,

exciting book. It's such a weak, weak

endorsement. That's excellent, exciting,

whatever. I'm Arthur Haley.

I wrote an airport. I don't give a shit, man.

It's very nicely bound. It was a very attractive

addition. Nice.

It's a book that exists. Nothing's existed as hard as

this book. I perceived this book.

Well, I think we'll hit on some more reception in a bit, but

it's probably worth for the listener who is listening to

this as a service to understand what we're talking about.

So the movie is about a joint British American plan devised to

steal the Soviet Union's most advanced new fighter self

aircraft, the Mig 31 which didn't exist at the time.

NATO code name Firefox which is capable of Max 6 hypersonic

flights apparently is invisible to radar.

Although I've got some interesting stuff about that we

can go into later. And it and it's most amazing

mind boggling thing is that a fire control of the weapons is

controlled by the thoughts of the pilot, which is apparently

the critical edge it's going to give because it can shorten the

gap between thinking of pressing a button and pressing a button.

So you've wouldn't back a couple of seconds there, which you

might have wasted pressing a button on a fire control system.

So the story focuses on Clint Eastwood, who plays retired US

Air Force Major Mitchell Gantt, who, as you said, has

experienced Vietnam vet pilot. And there was an ex member

something called aggressive Squadron and he was a prisoner

of war. However is the best part they

have. So the movie starts with him

living as a recluse somewhere. It's California doubling for

Alaska. That's right, California

doubling for Alaska. But but it's but it's filmed in

California because logistics. And it does one of my favourite

movie tropes, like right from the beginning.

So it's him outgoing for a jog. And it's something you only ever

see in movies from the 70s and 80s is people going up for a jog

in like sweatshirts and full trousers and they're just

absolutely stretched in sweat. I love that as they look.

So he's out doing that. He's jogging, keeps fit.

And then a helicopter comes and like, he immediately has a

flashback to this. He's time in Vietnam and assumes

he's being chased by a helicopter.

So he flees back to his house, runs inside, got a shotgun.

But it's that classic, like the the old vet who's been like out

of the game for years. It's like chopping wood and his

garden. And like some guy comes up and

he's like, if you need you for one last job.

I'm fly anymore I'm I'm too messed up with the delayed

stress reaction. Yeah, yeah.

I don't fly anymore. That's not who I am.

The beginning bit of the movie, I suppose as well, that we

should talk about is how they have, because there's a lot of

exposition delivered to us, like really quickly, like.

And one of them is they have this meeting between, I guess

it's like a combined delegation of, like, the American and the

British intelligence services. And we have this one guy,

Freddie Jones plays a character calls Aubrey.

You want to say Kenneth Aubrey? Yeah.

There's a scene there with a combined intelligence of the UK

and the US, what appears to be like the drawing room of a

stately home, which is obviously where these kind of meetings

take place, and not like a drab office building in central

London, but. We must return to tradition.

We must. Every vital meeting must now

take place in the the the dining room of some beautiful stately

pile, preferably one that's haunted.

Yeah. And yeah, that's what we need to

do. I'm.

I'm sick of conference rooms. I'm sick of MS Teams.

Everyone has to just meet in these like mahogany rooms, book

pipes and just hear like the distant weeping of like the lady

in grey who hanged us out 350 years ago.

This I'll. Tell you what I do love about

this is considering this is 1982.

So where are the Bonds at this time?

Bond We're still in Roger Moore territory, aren't we?

Which was the back end of Roger Moore territory.

Bond So like so the British intelligence services as

depicted on screen at this time, they it goes between like Bond,

Roger Moyer, a Bond and I think is the Alec Guinness, George

Smiley TV films. Are they are they coming out at

the same sort of time? Yes, yes they were.

So that's your, that's your other size.

And I think this movie is probably unusually for the

subject matter of the film, there's went more for the Smiley

style of spies. You've got this really.

You've got this elderly but elderly but like middle-aged,

avuncular, you know, slightly portly, looks a bit like a

history professor. Guy Briefing is about the Mig

31. He is representing the secret

intelligence services. So I love that.

Yeah, it's great. So he's great.

British spymaster guiding the plan.

That's it. It's excellent because he looks

like a Hobbit who's been like, stretched and made to like, take

on human form. Did you expect him on on his

like weekends to be dressed entirely in tweed, including a

tweed tie, just like down down at like a pub that's like older

than the United States of America by at least a century,

shithoused on like 15 pints of Ruddles, but still standing and

and just talking about Oh well, when I was in Korea, you know

he's great. I love the guy for a lot of time

from. All the locals, they don't know

his name because, well, they all suspect he's a spy, so they

don't know his real name. So they all just call him Mr Mr

Toad. So of course they refer his

houses. Toad Hall.

Absolutely God. Incredible.

Incredible. So the meeting in Toad Hall

basically. And this is like the Wind in the

Willows extended universe, right?

That's great. So they devised a plan that that

Mitchell Gantz is the one guy. Well, one guy.

So they're going to train up and then send into into Russia to go

and steal this fighter jet. And it's a bit like, it's a bit

like the conceit of of Armageddon, isn't it?

You know, if you if so, if you heard the the absolutely

legendary Ben Affleck commentary track of of Armageddon, sure.

You mentioned it when we were talking about Meteor.

Oh my God, it's so good. So there's a whole bit where he

just he's, he's so sarzonic. And there's one clip that does

the rounds. You'll find it on YouTube and

stuff. I'll put it in the show notes

Baby, where he's talking about how the the whole conceit of

that movie is they all decide that it would be easier to get a

bunch of experienced oil drillers and bring them to NASA

and then teach them in a matter of weeks how to become

astronauts instead of just getting a bunch of astronauts

who are already experienced engineers.

And you want to send these boys into space?

Fine, sure. They'll make good astronauts.

They don't know Jack about drilling.

I mean, this is a little bit of a logic stretch.

Let's face it. They don't know Jack about

drilling. How hard can it be?

Aim the drill at the ground and turn it on.

And, and this movie is the same thing.

It's like, right, we've got 1 pilot in the whole of America

who can fly this one plane. But, but unfortunately we've got

to get him to be a shithouse spy.

Whereas is it possible that maybe you could get someone

who's quite good at being a spy and then teach them how to fly

plane and. It's crazy because I mean,

especially like the way the film postulates it, the major things

are he's he's obviously fluent in the aggressive squadron,

which is a, which is like a real life thing in the US military.

It's a squadron that flies like op 4 aircraft something trained

guns and stuff. There'll be other guys that can

fly next. It's.

Part of it's part of the Top Gun, isn't it?

Yeah, it's part of the Top Gun schools.

There's. There's three prongs of it that

is the exact same size as the pilot who's, who's scheduled the

fly the plane, which which means he's going to fit like exactly

into his pressure suit, which is like, and, and he speaks Russian

because, because he's half Russian as like mom's Russian.

And and he and he grew up speaking it and he got his mom's

brilliant cowboy accent when he speaks Russian a few times,

which is brilliant because it's like, I don't know what's a

better flex. Sean Connery speaking about four

words of Russian, one of which is just cooled at the start of

Hunt for October. Kenny Sword just unrepentantly

speak in Russian with a cowboy accent.

It's. The nurse for Daniel.

That's like, that's for Daniel Pilgrim.

And I guess there's a whole because he's got to think in

Russian as well. And it's like, I mean the whole

the whole main powered controlled thing is very silly

at the lower the tone. We're talking about 4 Chan.

I saw a really good, really good ghost on 4 Chan years ago and

someone was like be me 18 year old meet or whatever get really

stored. Think about picking up a glass

of water. Pick up the glass of water.

Realised I just technically moved up with my mind.

Have a panic attack because if you Rachel, what up?

Oh, oh shit man, I'm just say that it's open.

The kind of monster. Oh man, it's like open at second

in the original Death Race 2000. How when they're talking about

David Carlene's character has got like a bionic hand that

makes them able to change gear in like half a second.

And like anyone can change gear in less than a second.

It's not really difficult. It's incredibly simple.

It's like a lot of people just kind of underestimate in the

length of a second. It's like, and and whatever.

I was like driving on crummy. Like, I'm going to say how.

Yeah, yeah. You sing them fiercely.

You know, quick, three of a second.

There we go. .3 of a second there we go class the book

doesn't do the whole Oz mom's Russian he speaks Russian kind

of thing and said the book just says he's he's had like

intensive lessons and he's been taught how to speak with a

British accent as well because his cover is like he's a Brit

so. Ah, good.

Right. I want to I want to ask you

about this. So there's a short training

sequence, which is just him going to an airfield, having one

conversation with someone. He goes, do you really think I

can do this or you just send me out here to die?

And that's the only time he has doubt.

And then for the rest of the movie, he's like super confident

that he's the only person you can find this plane, even though

he's a really bad spy. Anyway, one weirdly over

complicated thing is that the cover story they generate for

him is that, yeah, instead of being like just a routine

American businessman coming to to to Russia and then having his

papers be in order, they make him be.

In the film, he's a guy called Leon Sprague who was a heroin

smuggler. Yeah, but he's like, but he's

like, but he's like a state known heroin smuggler or

something. Yeah, yeah, it's the same in the

book. What the fuck is that?

Like it's crazy. It's really paranoid.

Double, triple bluff. The whole book is full of double

Bluffs. It's crazy.

The idea is that he's, he's like a low level enemy of the state.

He's like enemy of the state #23 or something.

He's like lower down on the KGB's radar.

And he's specifically lower down I guess on the Directorate that

doesn't deal with like espionage and super fighters and

protecting their basically answers and stuff like that.

And and the then set up that other guy who looks a bit like

him and dresses like him to get killed by his mates, get his

face rendered unrecognisable. And then there you go the

heroines who was an economic criminal.

He's dead. I go and the crazy thing is

right. This is how high stakes the

operation is in in the book, the guy that the kill the guy that

the dudes tradition to death in the park.

He's part of the British Embassy's security detail and

he's just set up to get killed by thesis.

Like that's, that's bleak. Right.

That's the service complaint, isn't it?

Yeah, that's, that's, that's, I mean, ethics check, ethics check

on that, please. Just culture, yeah.

That's, that's, that's, yeah. So so they have them set up as a

guy that is kind of on the radar, but for different

reasons, I guess. And then then gives them a way

to kind of destroy his cover identity, meaning that he can

then assume a second cover identity because he's given like

some additional papers that like, you know, show him to

someone else. And he goes from, he goes from

the the Moscow Hotel, the Warsaw Hotel.

Yeah. I, I, Oh my God.

I. Was going to ask.

About that I went on, yeah, I went on trip advised to like see

if the Hotel Moscow had any bad reviews and sadly it doesn't.

So you've answered my question about, about, about the Leon

Sprague business because I, I was, when I first watched it, I

was a bit like, why did this guy who like, what are the, why did

the really Leon Sprague like turn up?

I wouldn't, I wouldn't turn up. So a guy who looks exactly like

you, who's really important is coming into the country.

We need you to come and meet him.

Why? Yeah, it's well, doesn't it?

It's it's so much like saying that, saying to a member of the

British Embassy security staff, we need you to have your

moustache a specific way and wear some specific clothing.

And we're just going to hang around, you know, with me and a

few other Russian dissidents. And we're going to wait for a

guy you turn up who's dressed suspiciously like you.

And after that, I'm no the next young we'll we'll go see a film

or something. Yeah, I mean, the lie that they

probably told him is that first of all, the real guy is the

other guy's name. And the reason you're there is

that the two of you are going to go off in different directions

and and split the KGB's resources so that we can only

follow one each at a time. And then you're going to

obviously be like a a red herring and it'll catch it.

But then they'll show your real papers, and then you'll be.

Saying yeah, yeah, like, like. And you'd think that might be

the kind of way the table, right, Because he's part of the

embassy, you know, like he's got diplomatic protection.

I mean, he's not. Like the answer is searched unto

death in the middle of the park. Render him unrecognisable.

That book makes a huge deal about that.

The the Wikipedia summer at this point just says Gantt assumes

several identities during his mission, which is an

understatement. There's a whole sequence where

he's getting on a train and he thinks he's being followed and

we watch like an entire train journey take place.

Brilliant. It's a film that's like

positively serene in its in its piercing despite the grimness of

its satin even like if you just took out some of the shots of

like the sweep investors in the kind of long bleak drives in

endless nothing. It's like you could, you could

easily build it if like you took a few of those scenes, you got

chop it up. It's like we've, we've, we've

we've made an art house film about the the the struggles of

modern day Soviet peasantry. Stalker so he has that train

journey he goes into the the metro station and I, I, I'll

bring this this particular example up for a reason.

So we have that whole metro station bathroom fight.

So he goes to the metro station, he meets up, I think it's Warren

Clark. He meets up with who?

I love Warren Clark, but he can't do a Russian accent,

sadly. They've asked him to do

something that's beyond the extent of visibilities,

unfortunately, in this case. So yeah, But Clint Eastwood's

still having his stress delayed stress reaction.

Yeah, it's fucking tell you. It's trust reaction.

He slings slings off to the bathroom, gets into a cubicle,

has one of his sweating attacks. And then a KJB secret policeman

steps in to the to the bathroom, looks around a little bit and

then starts talking to him through the door saying like,

hurry up, we'll not look at papers.

And then the guy looks the papers and he goes, your papers

are not in order. And instead of instead of

insisting that your papers are in order, they try to and just

catching the guy and calling his bluff.

So he he, he just starts throwing hands.

He just starts throwing hands straight away.

Yeah, he has a fight, kills the guy and then he gets taught off

for killing the guy. So it was rightly by by by by

Warren Clark. He's like, yeah, you idiot, you

shouldn't have done that. Like and you shouldn't have done

that. You shouldn't go around killing

members of the KGB within an hour of you entering the

country. That's.

In in the book it's really funny as well because obviously he's

like he's he's he's really freaking out.

And so like Pavel goes, go to the toilet and make yourself

sick because you look really ill, really picky.

So go to the toilet, go to the toilet, make yourself sick.

And so these people think, oh, no, this, this guy's thrown up.

And so he goes off like to the netty.

And that looks like he didn't have to make himself be sick,

but he does and end up like sitting on the toilet and gets a

knock on the door. And he's like, oh, I'm in the

loo. And the Russian guys, English,

he's like, I'm in the loo, he said, remembering his training

or something. I'm in the loo, Governor, I'm

having a big old widdle. Uruguay broke it on it, paid a

penny, etcetera. Oh my God, I'll be out with you

here. 2 shakes of my lamb's tail.

Got that? I've just having a Jimmy widdle

in the old the old loo in the old dirty.

Lad. This is very normal.

Yes, start pooping. Yes, start pooping.

The the fight's better in the book, by the way, because he

just like, he kind of just knees him in the balls.

Nanak strangles him with the towel.

That is better. It's too long, It's too long.

It's not like a, it's wrong. You can go two ways with this.

It's either we haven't had any action for a while.

So. So this fight is actually

something we kind of awaiting for almost a bit of catharsis

because we've just been sitting around waiting for something to

happen for ages. And finally, yeah, something's

happening. But it's it's kind of not like

I'm not a director, but it's kind of clumsily directed a

little bit like it's so. So the viewpoint they decide to

put you in is of the KGB's agents.

So you've got Clint Eastwood is like coming towards us and

throwing hands at us, the audience.

So we are. And he's like, like he's coming

out like like slow us as well. And I don't get it.

Well, like it's terrible. I mean it's.

A violence of action, you know. Yeah, and I mean, at this point

in his career, Clint Eastwood's more than capable of doing a

really nasty, brutal bathroom fight scene.

This kind of thing should come easy to him.

He's directed several movies by this point, including like High

Plains Drifter and the Outlaw Josie Wales.

Like he's like, he's he's not, he's not, he's not like new to

the game. This isn't his first time around

the the boy on this. And even as acting as well as

the director, that's like, it's this is this guy was Dirty

Harry, man. And it's just it's just one day

we're going to do a TR list of all the bathroom fight scenes,

aren't we? I mean like this isn't on the

list. So from there, but they continue

their escape. They managed to get out of the

the metro station just before the body's discovered and

there's a nice little bit of like cross cutting just about

the discover the body just as they're trying to negotiate

their way out of the out of the metro station.

But they continue their journey then with some new identities

again towards the their final location, which is the air base

at Bilias, which is the final resting place of the the

Firefox. So they they make their way

across, across country there, but the KGB are kind of on to

them now, sort of. They're aware that someone's

coming. In, in in the book, the KJB are

fully aware that the scientists involved a part of the spy ring,

and they're just literally waiting for this is very Cold

War. They're literally waiting for

the most theatrical moment when they can bust the spy ring.

Yeah. So it's crazy.

It's like. That's hints out in the movie

that that they're aware of them and they're tracking them and

they want to kind of pounce on them at a certain time.

Yeah, just see what they do, Just see what they do.

See where they go next. Yeah, and also because they

especially want like, bust the bust the scientists just as the

first secretary's gotten there. So haha, I go.

So I'm going to get mad promotions because I'm because

I'm, you know, breaking aspiring right in front of the big boss.

Yeah, kind of thing. It's a bit like that bit in

Rogue One where Chronic Chronic rocks up just in time to killer

killing her. So and everybody.

Yeah. Oh yes.

And then again, as I said previously in in a prelude, like

doing this episode, this this film in a way walked so Rogue

One could run. I mean, it's, I mean, it's even

in so far as it absolutely erases the lives of almost

everyone involved on the good guy side.

It does, yeah. That's a.

That's a Really. Merciless.

It is merciless. You know.

Completely and. They're not given glorious

deaths either. They're kind of like some of the

pretty sad and pathetic, aren't they?

I mean, there's the, I mean, there's the guy who gets beaten

to death in his interrogation. Yeah, you know.

One one of them he just told took poison off screen when he

got arrested and then and you get Pavel when he finally

obviously survives long enough to see to see the the Firefox

take flight needs to say I'm going to shoot myself now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of suicide.

Yeah, that's, that's the one. I was thinking of another

connection then, before we get too far off this.

And it's all, it all connects. So industrial light and magics.

John Dikstra was a special visual effects producer of this

movie. So.

So there's a lot of visual callbacks to Star Wars and some

kind of little narrative. System.

There's some, there's some custom callbacks to Star Wars as

well, yeah. Indeed there is.

But there's a there's a there's a production and special special

visual effects call back as well.

So that's nice. No, and you saw it during the

trailer there. So I kind of it's been a few

weeks since I watched the movie properly.

So I wasn't quite familiar with my head of like the a lot of the

footage of the jet is against high speed, like speed up

footage of like actual clouds and topography.

But there is one sequence towards the end where they're

flying through a valley. It was probably meant to be the

Urals, but that that is actually that's all miniature work for

the landscapes. And you can see because it's

it's quite an obvious gorge that they've kind of created there

for it. And that that is very redundant

of the trench run at the end of the absolutely.

Yeah, even just like kind of like conceits when how like the

air missiles look a little bit like photon torpedoes.

Yeah, yeah. And and even like the ship's

cannons sound a little bit like these are guns at times.

Cool. Well, we've got quite far ahead

there. So I suppose Mitchell Gantt is

going to infiltrate the the air base itself.

Before he does that, he goes and speaks to some of the scientists

who are going to get him in and and the scientist's wife.

So they get to get a bit of a brief on the set up physical

security they've got at the at the place, you know, like dog

patrols and how many how many people are marching around the

perimeter and all that kind of stuff.

And the additional and if enough and trivia they've they've laid

on because there's a cock and ass because the the first

secretary's coming. And again, you get the very

these people that dooms to die kind of vibe like he's like he's

written. They became chief scientist, the

the one that keep calling a Jew. Doctor Peter Baranovich.

Yeah, that's the one. The book also really is on

thick. The book like everyone's always

dissing as as as ethnicity in religion.

So when he meets like Baranovich and his wife just very much got

the these people are going to die.

These people, these people aren't can be able to survive.

It's very doomed. It's a doomed film.

Thanks, Jim. It's really obvious though, and

it's it's kind of good that they said it that way because like

it's really obvious that once, once The Jets up in the air,

like it's all going to turn in into it, like, wait, how did

that happen? Heads, heads will roll and it'll

just, and it'll just sort of cascade of heads rolling like

like because that's such a, that's just like a thumb in the

eye to the, to the, to the motherlands, you know, no.

One's feeling no one's going to survive this.

Who's on the good guy side, you know?

So at least the movie like is upfront about that and and

doesn't try and say like because it would have been really easy.

I think especially this this point in the in the Cold War and

everything to make a movie that was like super jingoistic and

just like there was no no negative consequences for

everybody just got away with it. But at least it kind of

highlights like like the the masses of people in the

background. I'll tell you what reminds me of

going back to Star Wars again Andor it's all the all the

ordinary people who are within the cogs of the machine who are

slowly like in their own tiny little acts of incredible

courage or doing just move, just moving the needle that tiny

little bit to contribute to absolutely a broader goal.

And it's cool that this movie kind of like shows that

actually. Yeah, That's that's I will give

this movie credit for it doesn't it doesn't communicate it

especially well. It's quite, it's kind of hard to

watch after a while, like until, until you get to the like.

And I'm not saying that because like I'm I've got the attention

of a toddler. Like like like like like like

these. While watching it, you're

playing. While watching this Skippity

toilets playing in the background like Skippity

Firefox. What the Sigma?

No, no, like, because like I'm a big fan of like Tinker Ted, the

sort of spy and stuff like I've I've got, I have got a an

attention span that kind. This movie doesn't like

explicitly say a lot of this stuff.

A lot of this stuff is like you have to like add it together

yourself because it doesn't it doesn't hang on to like no one

says like this is the sacrifice I'm making, you know, for the

greater good kind of thing. I think they don't really delve

into the the wise and like where force of of of why they're doing

it. Pavel Dan's main ally, his wife

is Jewish and is in prison for protesting the Soviet invasion

of Czechoslovakia. So that's something kind of his

main motivation. It's not out of particular love

at all for America. I think that's out of anger at

what his country's done, but it's a kind of cooled, measured,

quiet anger, you know, that's going to kill him in the end.

It's nihilistic in a way. They don't have a Western both

with Western culturally and Wild West, I guess, bent around them.

These good guys, They aren't, they aren't like the plucky

villagers who were like, oh, we're going to defend the

village against against the marauding whatever.

And Clint Eastwood, the High Plains Drifters is going to come

and whatever, you know, Clint Eastwood's going to ride in and

help us defend ourselves against the kind of.

Like the man in the man in black, you know, like the yeah,

yeah, the white hats are going to be the black hats and it's

all going to be happy. The laws back in time.

Yeah, like it's like it's. For those individual people,

like it's it's over, they've already lost.

All they want to do is like stop it from stop Stop total

annihilation, and maybe hope that in the future for

successive generations they may have made things better, but

there's no hope for themselves. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. I've earned my life for a

sunrise I've never seen. That will go again like it's

it's it's I don't know, man, I've really love this film.

I really love just the characterization of all these

people who I've. Talked myself into liking it a

lot more now actually over the last like sort of 1050 minutes.

You do see, you see. Well, when I watch it, I was

like, this is really right because like all these guys,

like there's no gung ho about it.

Even Gant's not gung ho like like he.

He. Doesn't have the.

He's not he, He's. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. He's already in the sense that,

or maybe he is a realist. Like in the reality of the film,

he maybe is the only person who could find the plane.

So, you know, he might be, as far as he's concerned, speaking

factually, it is me. I'm the only person who can find

the plane. It is me, you know, because

there's no ego about him besides that.

That's the only thing he's super egotistical about is that I am

the best pilot. I am the best stick jockey.

But apart from that, he has no confidence.

You know, he's fully up his depth the entire time and he's

getting, you know, he's getting kind of admonished for a lot of

the film as well by various dissidents and stuff.

Yeah, like, it isn't even like he's treated as a big shot in

the States before he goes over to rush hour.

It's like he can do it like for like, oh, you can, you can do

this kind of thing, but we're still nervous about it's.

Probably why Reagan likes the movie so much, because it shows

these people as being like as noble, brave people who don't

like the USSR, but also they live under it and they're

miserable and they're all poor. So it's like, don't live over

there. It's shit.

Even the good guys have a shit time.

Like stay over here. We're going to have RoboCop soon

like. Judd Grief.

So as you're saying, he has the brief with the the scientists

and his and his wife we talk about and they brief him that

there's going to be a second plane and the hangout.

So there's not just the one plane they've got, there's a

second plane as well, which means for us it's like it means

it's a dog fight. Because you know, obviously at

this point, once he's taken off, we're like, well, it's the best

plane in the world. It's super fast.

It's got like mind bullets. That's telekinesis, Kyle.

So what's the threat once he's airborne?

Well, now the threat is there's a second one of these planes,

another prototype. So you know, it's saying up the

obvious showdown. There's a whole weird bit.

And I want you to shed some light on this as well, having

read the book, there's a whole weird bit where his access to

the base is secured. He's given a uniform, he's going

to take the identity of a Lieutenant Colonel or something.

Yeah. The first secretary is going to

arrive at like 1900 hours or something.

Until then just hide in this building and put the shower on

and if anyone comes just see her in the shower.

Yeah, it's crazy. In the book you say accidentally

sitting on a chair in the shower just berating someone who tries

to come in. Yeah, right.

That's it. So there's a bit in the movie

and it's in the trailer. Yeah, so.

That's in the trailer where he's there and he's like, he's

obviously stripped down because I'm in the shower.

I need to be naked. Yeah.

And he hears people coming. So there's a little shot of the

you can even see at the trailer where he's like lines himself up

against like the wall with his, with his pistol whilst he's

naked, while the water's running like, oh, if they come, I'm

gonna be ready to shoot. It's like you're in the shower.

You've done the. You weren't gonna go through

with the cover of being naked in the shower.

Why? And get the gun out?

Why did you take your clothes off your lunatic?

You're gonna shoot someone when they came in anyway.

Like it's literally just chilling out of chair in in the

shower room, just like kicking off of them and berating them

and telling them off through the door.

It's brilliant. Let your shower.

I'm going to fly a jet in a bit. I need to have a shower.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I got to be really

smooth for this. I got to be hydrated.

And manscaping. And like it's like because no

one knows whether they like controls for the for like the

for like the mind impulse like go, right?

Yeah, so this might have been a moment when I was looking away

and not paying attention. Like what?

How does it link to his brain in a non invasive way?

It doesn't show any kind of like non invasive or invasive.

Kind could you imagine if like David Cronenberg made this

movie, it'd be like a bone sticking in that like links,

like like a little fringy, fringy nerve ending that like he

wraps around an exposed bone on the back of his neck or

something. It'd be, it'd be horrific.

It'd be incredibly warm at 40,000, wouldn't it?

It would be like just like some some like narrow cable snake up

his face and in through like as. He was like.

A bit of blood and he's like, ah, it's love to be king.

It'd be like Videodrome. It'd be like he gets the helmet

on and like and like the visor moves and then like a back

projection from inside the visor comes out or something.

It'd be something of grim. God, man.

I love. Differently, but yes.

So no, there's no really kind of explanation as to the whole

mandibles thing or how any really works.

I mean, he talks to himself in Russian to fire the missiles.

Yeah, I was going to get into that.

Yes, and people are mad about it in the IMDb goofs as well.

Yeah, I bet they were. I bet they were.

So he gets out the shower, he's he gets he gets the flight suit

on and he's walking across the hangout.

The hangout is filling up with scientists and the first

secretary's arriving. So there's a delegation of

people arriving, I guess like all around the same kind of

time. He's got the flight suit on this

and all can see who he is. He climbs into the jet like no

big deal. Just like D latches, whatever,

you know, the little tubes that are sticking to like pressurised

air and all that kind of carry on.

Yeah, I might be fusing this with my memory of watching

Topkin Maverick shortly after, like arming the massage, all

that good stuff. Anyway, it comes in somebody

makes him straight away and he's like, oh, I just need to see

your ID card. And he's just like, and he's

like, I need to see ID and this is my favourite thing.

This is my favourite thing and I love this whenever I see it in a

movie and I saw something else recently as well.

It's great. Yeah, he shoves him away by by

pushing his face. I love someone getting, I love a

little man getting pushed away by the face.

It's just like so masculine by and then and then as this is

happening, the KGB of just finally figured out the true

identity of the guy who's going to steal the jet, Mitchell Gant

So and but they're too late. They walk into the hangar.

He's already there firing it up and the guy goes Mitchell Gant

yes, and that and that's the guy who's in Star Wars.

He's the Admiral. What's his name in Star Wars?

Admiral Kat in the book the scientists free at the diversion

before Gant appears. So like the panels are going to

create their version by setting a fire essentially to the to the

second prototype. Right.

That's right. That's in the movie.

That's in the movie, yeah. Yeah, so one of the the

scientists go off and have a little bit of a conversation in

the corner and like obviously the kind of trying to keep away

from the hand glass because everyone's watched all the time.

And like the the little kind of town itself is more like a

prison camp kind of thing and having a conversation with each

other without the handlers notice.

And then Branovich goes like one of the other engineers guns,

right. So you've got to excuse

yourself, go to the toilet, and then when you come back, you've

got to do the do the diversion. So he goes off the toilet.

It takes a while to come back. And when he re emerges,

Branovich knows as a Malone. And like Branovich's internal

monologue is like, Ah, he's he's taken a wrench and killed the

guard that followed him. That's like, I wish we'd seen

that. And then he sets fire to a fuel

drum. That's I guess conveniently they

are the prototype. And then he's not seen for like

a few pages until Branovic witnesses him just wandering

around fully engulfed in flame because not only is he as he set

a fire, he set his self on fire. It's mental.

And surely after that Branovic and his mates get gunned down.

But like a Branovic die, he's thinking the Gantt hadn't made

it, which is I guess kind of sad.

That's. Kind of sad, yeah.

You see what I mean? It's doomed.

Who isn't doomed, of course, is Mitchell Gant, who doesn't

manage to effect to get away. So he starts the jet up.

They're all like, shut the door, shut the door.

But it's too late. He gets through the door and you

see him take off. Now, of course, that's when we

see Warren Clark doing himself as well again.

So even at that moment of triumph, there's the sadness of

Warren Clark ending his own life.

The music at this point, we'll talk about music when it comes

to needle drops as well. But the music at this point for

me, there's the score at this point was particularly galling

because it kind of went from the the tension of the escape.

It goes a little bit sad when Warren Clark killed himself.

And then like the most ridiculously over the top

triumphant funfair then plays the first shots of the Firefox

in flight. And it's just like it's like

this is so cheesy and it's not like cheese in a good way.

It's just like cheesy. It sounds like I love Michelle

jar, right. Michelle jar.

That's right, isn't it Maurice jar?

I mixed that was a conflation of Jean Michelle jar popcorn.

I know Maurice Jar, but you know, we've talked to him

before. So he was he did the score for

No way out. You know, he's also famous for

witness Doctor Zhivago, but also this movie.

And again, I'll talk about it when we do needle drops.

But but I'm a big fan of his work.

But for this one, not so much unfortunately.

But we have the we have the plane in flight and there's a

bit of a sequence where the spies back in, I guess the UK or

America. It looks like they're in the UK

with an American liaison there. They are kind of figuring out

whether or not Gant's airborne. He's got this like tracker

device that they sent him off with.

They had a carry on his person the entire time.

Yeah. It's where they make a big point

about that. But then you they never see any

peril come to that. That device.

He just has it the entire time and it's fine.

The book wants me refers, but it's the deaf aid.

Is that maybe a pun? No, that's the special gun

things. It's a bit like a hearing aid.

So Azella Monlau calls it the deaf aid.

There's there's some there's some under created language in

this book and this film, Yeah, but especially in the photo,

yeah. Yeah, so he has a device he

plugs it into the into the jet. So again, they haven't got a

have they got the plans for this jet, but they've managed to

create a device that works with it interfaces it perfectly no

drive is required all fine. I just plugged it in anyway

right That that that aside maybe it's just a power supply who

knows but the. Bookie Trap said it was lagging.

It just like picks up the radio broadcast.

Yeah, but easy peace either way they can determine that it's

moving fast enough that it must be airborne therefore, which is

great. He's he.

The first thing he does is he's obviously aware that whilst he's

gaining heights and before he kind of figures out how to use

the jet properly, I suppose he knows that he's going to be

visible to some land based radar systems, so he needs to steal

them off in the wrong direction. So he initially starts by

heading South. He has a conversation with the

First Secretary. Yeah, Who addresses them

directly, like this is addressed to the gentleman who has started

the property of the OSSR. So you're getting the rule

treatment. Oh, that's something to talk

about, actually. Is that from as soon as he gets

off on that jet, like like Clint Eastwood is talking to himself,

like the whole the rest of the movie, like he narrates

everything in English, but every thought he has, everything that

comes to his mind, everything he does, he says out loud.

And and, and I mean, the whole thing is because I say, I don't

know that, you know, there's going to be accounting a black

box running. So just in case you die, if you

want to give us like kind of a blow by blow account of what

you're doing just with the find your face cube ass frozen dead

body deep beneath the sea and working, working, you know, drag

up the plane that it's entombed by and we can listen the voice

and Oh yes. So this button does this.

This button does that. Yeah, it's, it's, it's not

great. No, so he has that conversation

with the guy. He starts by like flying S He

has a whole thing where he's, he's kind of implying that he's

going to fly S into Central Europe, I guess curve around or

something like that to try and get to allied territory.

But actually his big plan the entire time is to fly N over the

Arctic ice and and and refuel there.

Yeah, so we have to get himself like witnessed by an airliner

who'll then obviously call it in and then that's what he'll do is

he'll like zig one the thing he's going to zag and he's going

to go north to the. Arctic, which he does.

And then from there, I guess I did say at the beginning of

that, like the movie really picks up and is really

interesting for like the last half an hour.

But off and on, like the sort of the first sort of 10 minutes of

that is, is a bit of a cat and mouse.

You do get a fun back and forth between, I guess it's the first

secretary. There's Oliver Cotton who plays

Dmitri Pradhan, who's like the head of the KGB.

And there's one of the guy who's, who's this general, Yeah,

it's General Vladimirov. Klaus Lovitch, I think plays

General Vladimirov who's like the guy in charge of the efforts

to recover the the jet And, and interestingly, how it goes down

to the book. So in the movie, it's, it's

indicated very much that this guy's quite capable.

He's intelligent. He's got a strategic, a keen

strategic mind and also a a psychological understanding and

physical understanding of the constraints and limitations of

what's going on with the aircraft.

So he's the one that calls out he hasn't gotten fuel to make it

back to America or even to the UK.

So you have to land somewhere before he to refuel, before he

continues his onward journey. He's the, he's the one who says

like, right. He would want us to know that

he's, if we know where he's going, it's because he wants us

to know where he's going. He would have made a mistake

this early. So that's obviously part of his

plan. So we should look there.

He's the guy who calls out and, and disputes the disposition of

forces change that the the first secretary says.

So when he just land to refuel and there's a nearby, it's meant

to be a Russian cruiser, but it's actually played by an

American cruiser there and it has its own organic aircraft

like helos. And they start doing a combat

air patrol. He's the one who who says to the

first secretary, don't send them to that place, that last known

location. That's a waste of time.

It wouldn't be there. Send them here on its first on

that kind of stuff. So anyway, right, there's a

whole bunch of the back and forths where they're arguing and

the general is shown to be like intelligent and all over it.

And the first secretary is shown to be a reactionary hot headed

buffoon for one of the better, better term.

So that's interesting. I like that.

That's really cool. And and that's about as

interesting as they can make it, given that one persons going at

like 6 times the speed of sound apparently.

Well, people are in an office about which I think is actually,

I think it's absolutely class, to be honest.

It is really good back and forth and it's so long.

It's a long back and forth between them and it's and

they're really loggerheads and it's and it's and it's

excellent. It's a bit like in the back end

of this movie, they've just slotted in a short film version

of like Sync the Bismarck. Just like that's going to run on

for a little bit where there's guys in the room argued about

how to do this thing and then it goes back and deals with what

he's up to. The first point when we see when

was the Firefox actually in action and that's when it's

picked up by crown base of swimmer cells and have some

missiles fired out of infrared home missiles.

And same thing happens in the book.

He's like I've got to create a larger explosion than by jet

engines. I'm going to shoot down this

random reconnaissance aircraft that's flying back to base.

And it's like, does he play not have flat expenses?

Yeah, of course. But later in the book, later in

the book, it has like, I think like one or two like super

flares that can release and it's like that's an under cell.

Yeah, that's a good one. So there's there's two bits,

right. There's two bits about that

sequence that that I found irritating.

One was as you said, they didn't have flares on board the the

jet. That's that's mental.

The second one is that that's the first time he does weapons

release. So he goes through the whole

process of I need to think in Russian, and then he says it in

Russian, and then he fires the missile, which, one, him going

through that process takes longer than pressing a button.

And two, he's done it. He's done it now at like minute

80. Something of the movie.

Yeah. Yeah.

And then the very end dogfight sequence hinges on him

remembering says in Russian. And he does it again.

And it's like a whole use the Force Luke kind of sequence.

You know what? That I didn't even think of

that, but yeah. Oh, that's exactly what it is,

man. Now I just want like a bunch of

X wings like coming like that. Before he finishes, though,

there is the sequence that so I alluded to this bit where he

flies over an American cruiser, which is meant to be Russian and

and there's a bit then after that he has to refuel.

So this is cool. So they the AUS submarine comes

up through the Arctic ice. He lands on the Arctic ice.

That's cool. I quite like that.

What I do like about it particularly is that you you see

the they must have made for the movie.

They made it like a handful of different models and props for

for the plane, right. But one of them is like a full

size version of the plane. And there's only a couple of

times where like there's a bit where you get in and it starts

moving and the and the wings kind of like wobble a little

bit. And it's a bit like, I don't

know if they've wobble that much, but but it's really cool.

And there's a there's a funny story from the production of the

movie about that full size version of it as well, where

because they they put a little like bike motor in it and they

could drive around. So there's a day about them

like, like going for, like, going for like a little joyride

on this thing and like, and then like nearly crashing it and

stuff and damaging it. So yeah.

Dude, it's rock. Yeah, it's clash and it's a bit

trivial. So the the footage of the the

submarine rising through the pack ice that is just directly

cut from the movie Ice Station Zebra from so which is maths.

So that film was what, like 14 years prior?

That's really cool. I'm going to have to do

credibility check on some of the naval aspects of this whole

submarine operation, by the way. So I'm going to say yes, some of

the things in the book are credible or non credible.

So as as you mentioned earlier on, there's a second prototype

of the of the plane, which is this is the foreshadowing we

need. We need to know that the next

thing we're going to do is get that second plane up in the air

because it's the only plane that can hunt down and catch up with

this plane. And they know this plane is

lacking fuel. So we fuel the one slightly

more. It can go faster for longer and,

and close the gap. So they do that, they get in the

air. But before before I talk too

much about that, I need to talk about like the stealth planes in

general. Should we do a little stealth

plane chat? Absolutely.

What it's all about is trying to minimise what's called the radar

cross section of, of something and what governs the radar cross

section of be it a plane, a warship, you know, a helicopter,

anything is it's a handful of factors.

Basically it's the size of something, the shape of

something are the aspects that it is onto the radar that's

looking for it and the, and the material it's made from as well,

basically. So really, really broad terms

things you want to avoid if you can, like ferrous metals stuff

up bounces, some bounces off of large flat surfaces because from

some aspects they'll be fine. But if you're dead onto it,

it'll be a humongous signature comes back.

So you kind of want to avoid large flats of you want many

small flat surfaces, basically to diffuse it in different

directions. That's that's what you want.

You don't want like very small detailed stuff on it.

So if you look at like warships nowadays that are designed to

have a small radar cross section, you'll see they look a

bit like they've like a collection of they look like a

low Poly model from a video game Like like it's, it's it's lots

of flat, flat surfaces all point in different directions.

But like the usual things you'd you'd expect to see on the upper

deck from like older ships, you don't see.

So you don't see like you don't see like a waist that you can

walk up and down on often. Often it's entirely enclosed

with like only the flight deck and aspects of the hangar.

Yeah, it seems like the Zumwalt class looked like something from

the like 1990s Amiga game because they're all just like

we've got 5 polygons. Yeah, exactly, exactly that.

So things like the cable deck up four and back after be like

under the deck and then an enclosed space so that people

walking around cable fittings, winches, reel, like all that

kind of stuff all hidden behind like a flat surface vehicle

launch missile silos instead of like on deck missile silos that

move around so they'll be inside the deck and then fire, you

know, the guns themselves. Like, you know, a really easy

example you can like easily Google is, is what used to be

called the, well, the, the Crichton, the 4-5 gun on a, on a

type 22 frigate was rounded. And then like later batches of

type 20 threes and onwards and, and type 40 fives are like, like

the head of Krysen from they're from Red Dwarf.

That's what that's why, that's why they call them that because

they, again, they're like little Poly in different directions.

All that, that kind of stuff is the radar cross section.

So that's a really long way way of saying that the Firefox is

not a particularly stealthy aircraft based on its radar

cross section. So the reason I know about this

is I looked at, I did some research and I found a really

cool document of lectures from the US Naval Academy by a guy

called AE Fuchs. And he was doing like a series

of lectures on Red Cross section for, for like naval aviators,

engineers and and so on as part of his Cinco passage, I guess

like sensors and communications package of lectures and things.

And now I haven't done Cinco in probably about 10 years.

So a lot of this stuff was like, Oh my God, my brain is, is

frying just trying to understand all the maths, right?

Because this is not my field of expertise apart from like the

very basic principles. I just kind of explained there,

but this goes into grave detail looking at like the, the, the

disposition of it, the fins, the, the wingspan, the, the

shape of the, of the, the, the cockpit and critically like the,

the air intakes and exhaust for the engines.

So as an example, an F35 Lightning 2 aircraft has a radar

cross section which is about -30 decibels, which is in layman's

terms because it's easier to imagine it based on like how big

the object would be. If you imagine the radar cross

section is like big with the object look on a on a radar

screen and like and like what object in real life it would

equate to. So even though an F85 Lightning

B aircraft is pretty big, it has the radar cross section of 0.001

metres, approximately that of like a tennis ball.

Yeah. Air squared the the radar cross

section of the Firefox's engine intakes alone, not the whole

airframe, is 5757 decibels, which means that if you do the

conversion from decibels to metre squared, it's about 5 and

a half, 500,000 metres squared. Just just based on like the

shape and the materials and the disposition of it on the

aircraft and all that kind of stuff.

For that alone I might have done the mathematical conversion

wrong, but the the the fact alone is that just the air

intakes on the Firefox are significantly worse than the

entire an entire F35 S The other thing I was going to talk about

is the Iranian F313 care aircraft.

I'll put an image up on on the video here so people at home can

see what I'm talking about. But in 2013 there was an arms

Expo which Iran presented the first of its ever stealth

aircraft. Iran's in a difficult spot in

terms of developing its military because it hasn't got many

friends and the the people's it is friends with also just steal

designs from stuff and they don't want to share them.

So they presented this thing in 2013 and it got roundly

ridiculed I think because everyone who looked at it said

there's no way that thing is air worthy and there's no way that

it's a manned aircraft because it was a bit it was it was a lot

smaller than the most of aircraft Exactly.

And whilst the basic concepts, the the idea of having, you

know, smaller flat surfaces that go in a different direction,

that kind of stuff were there, it just looked like it wasn't

strong enough an airframe to to be able to get into the air

manoeuvre and go at the speeds it was purporting to go out as

well. So Fast forward to save face,

what they kind of then went on to do was then say, actually,

right, it's not meant to be, it's not meant to be a manned

aircraft. It's, it's actually meant to be

an unmanned aircraft. It's it's meant to be a drone.

OK. But again, if you look at most

drones now, because you haven't got the burden of having to make

it into a a cockpit with with somebody inside, you can change

the shape of it entirely, get rid of all that.

So if you look at a Ripper drone or Predator drone, they're very

similar. There's what looks like a

cockpit kind of almost and that is rounded at the end at the

forward end, that's where the sensor package goes.

And the rest of that entire frame is there to to provide

like there is some electronics in there and stuff, but it's

also mainly to be an air with E frame to get this thing up.

So we can go on. It's incredibly long missions at

high altitude to just float around doing it doing it's ISR.

So the care by comparison stuck to its shape and pretty much so,

but they've made it smaller still.

And there's a video that I'll probably put on again so people

can look at that down below. If I figure out how to embed

that during this of the Kia now as it currently is doing a

launch from a carrier. What they do is they have a an

annual maritime military exercise for the IRGCN, the

Iranian Republican Guard Corps, Navy IRGCN.

And what they do is they get all their small, small fast attack

of craft like sort of the Hendigens, the Hudongs, the

Jamarans, all that stuff, get them all out driving together,

fine off missiles, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then the end the thing by normally by having a large

wooden aircraft carrier that they build and they tow it out

to like somewhere itself, like Bandra Bass or something.

And then they blow it up. Bandra Bass is like an island

that's like not that far away from the UAE.

So it's kind of easy, easy to be seen.

What they do is they tow it out there and they blow it up at the

end of it as a big show of force to say, look, we could destroy

an aircraft carrier with these rockets.

But like, it's made of wood, It can't move.

It hasn't got a layer defence system.

It's, it's, it's like, it's just, it's just.

Like. Yeah, it's the wicked man.

The there's a next generation stealth stealth drone.

There it goes. I'm I'm I'm in this film we're

discussing now also makes some pretty egregious use of remote

controlled aircraft in terms of the little helicopter taken off

from the ship and then getting destroyed.

You know the. Once it goes, pops.

Yeah, the remote control which pissed me off because there was

no navalized hands like naval aviation helicopter for the

Russians, but for whatever reason they just made made a

remote control helicopter like the made one look like one of

the really early model hangs with the kind of boxy cockpit

before went to the little kind of bubble canopy thing.

So the second Firefox is in the air actually up with he's caught

up with Gantt and they have a bit of a bit of a dogfight

through the mountains. What did you think of like the

sequence of how it looks and how kind of felt to watch?

Wasn't especially thrilling was was all right, but it was like

there was obviously a massive influence of like the Death Star

trench run in in in like the way it was made and stuff.

The book has the face of presented better.

There's there's a cool bit when a gunt has complete loss of

control and goes into the flat spin and now he crashes in the

film, but it doesn't feel like there's like super high stakes,

but it's just not gripping. I'd know, maybe, maybe right?

Maybe. I love the espionage end of it

and the bleak miserableness of the whole spying sequences.

There's two, there's two, there's two things that that I

think are wrong with the look fight.

So as I mentioned earlier, I watched Top Gun Maverick and not

long after I watched this movie, There's there's there's, there's

a handful of things that our film does that this one doesn't.

And maybe that's because it's a different kind of movie.

It's a different kind of story it's trying to tell.

But in that movie, it's incredibly clear for this entire

runtime precisely what the stakes are for everybody,

exactly what they're trained to do.

Gives you really clear geography of the entire area.

It's like it's drilled into you. These guys have to fly under

this mountain. If they go over this altitude,

they'll get attacked by sands. They've got to do this one run

where they go up this, really, really sip it, and they've got

to upside down and they've got to write themselves and they've

got to fire a missile. That's miracle #2 all that

stuff. But as soon as they've popped up

over the top there, regardless of the success of their run

forward, that's it. They're in the sands, the 5th

generation fighters are going to intercept them, combat air

patrols are going to pick them up, all that stuff.

So it's really clear, Elaine out exactly what the stakes are for

the entirety of that. So when it does happen in the

movie, everything that's happening, you knew it was going

to happen already. So you start hearing like

missile tone, you start seeing the sound as far as missiles and

you're like, none of this is surprising.

This is exactly what I knew was going to happen.

We've been talking about it time and time again.

So boom, we knew that was going to happen.

Cool. And to layer it and just to just

to hammer it in home, they cut back to the OPS room of the

carrier where they're also monitoring the picture there.

And they are also adding additional commentary there.

So that's one that's one thing. The second thing that this movie

fails at, I think compared to Tucker Maverick, which I think

nails it in terms of that was geography, I'd say, and this one

is commentary. So as I mentioned earlier, I

think Eastwood spends the entire movie kind of talking to himself

in quite a calm, kind of low, low level, just kind of vaguely

conversational tone about what he's doing.

Like, OK, now, now I've got to head up north now and just head

to now I've got to go and land and refuel.

Now I've got to head on home and, oh, this guy's behind me.

Oh, I've got to get into a dogfight now.

And it's just like, OK, so you're, you're you're pretty

calm. I'm pretty calm.

I, I, I, I'm not, I'm not thrilled.

I'm not excited. Like nothing's going on.

What talk of Maverick Nails is that because they're using FAC

Hornets and they have a weapon systems operator behind them and

a pilot up forward, there's always two people in there.

And two people means there's dialogue so they can talk to

each other what's going on. So they're giving each other

what you could easily dismiss as like just routine reports for

teamwork, operating an aircraft together, but all the story is

being delivered by their tuna voice when they're doing it.

Yeah. You've got, you know, you've got

like, well, Maverick is always on his own, don't worry.

But but he's got, here's his son Rooster.

Yeah, he's piling and he has a weapon system up behind him.

And they always have to like we got tone and like firing flares

and like, you know, they're always singing.

It's like what they're doing. It's coming down forever.

We've got two more of them. They're coming in now.

Donkey's coming in hard. And it's like, like, shit's

happening. Shit's happening.

And like, yeah, and you're. Constantly getting that feed of

like, it's just like there's flares flying, there's people

flying around, there's missiles going off and people will get

splash, one splash, one donkey coming down weapons.

I don't think this is slam eye, but they should be saying slam

eye because they've seen a missile.

They've seen a missile visually. But yeah, they're using like

Bibbidi code words. They're they're, they're yelling

each other what's going on and like it's all going off.

Whereas this is like, yeah. It's cost.

It's cost. It's like cockroach resource

management but make it sexy. And it's kills, Yeah.

And whereas I think by comparison, Firefox is, is like

almost bolasical. It's almost like because there's

a because the effects don't look, there's the handle of very

similarities. You don't really believe they're

in that that bit of airspace they're like superimposed on and

they're moving in a bit of an unnatural way.

There's one weird kind of fifth generation J turn like one of

the managers, which does which sort of defies physics against

like the factor behind them that the clouds that are being

projected behind them are speed up video.

So that already looks a little bit unnatural, so that your

mind, your uncanny valley for that has already been sort of

tricked off because he's so calm and because the music is kind of

isn't really like the the music. And it's this weird spongy 80

synth stuff that that that Maurice Charles doing.

Like the whole thing doesn't feel like tense.

It doesn't feel like there's a lot of stakes going on.

Yeah. Doesn't.

It and then and then finally, like I said earlier, like it

ends with that use the force Luke and he fires like a missile

and that's. From the Yeah yeah.

Like cabin and then that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like like fires the missile backwards because he's got to

just think and rush in the fire backwards.

And it's like, and I mean the, the book again, it's not great.

I mean, it's very much a kind of like reformer kind of, and I

mean that in terms of military doctrine and not in terms of the

political company. I mean party in terms of the

idea that like, you know, these, like people with these, we had

like reformer opinions. Like things like I will be on

visual range engagements and never going to have, but it's

got to be dog fighting with cannons and and like short range

IR missiles and stuff. It's just it's it's not great,

not especially cool. And I don't know, man, it's like

it feels like that didn't really have enough budget to make it a

really exciting, you know, if they're throwing more money at

it, more special effects and more more everything, maybe a

bit more maximal kind of thing. Like you said, with a

storytelling. If there was something other

than him going, oh, now I'm going to say this myself

backwards. There we go.

There you go. Boom, it's done.

Kind of thing, Yeah, I get that and.

I think the other thing it misses out on, so this differs

from Top Gun. So Top Gun's never had this.

Another thing you could do here is you've got 22 identical

planes. So you know what's the thing

that differentiates them? It's the man in the sea.

Yeah, exactly. We've been, we've been hearing

this entire movie that that Mitchell Gant is the only guy

who can find this pin. He's the best the US has got is

the top guy in the aggressive squadron.

He's the best pilot out there. So why do they not make more of

the fact that you've got a second pilot using the same the

same plane? And he was like, obviously this

guy is like super competitive. There's only two, there's only

two Russian pilots who can find these planes.

One of them has been killed. He's now the best that Russia

has enormous amount of pressure. He's doing this one.

If he gets this, if he if he gets Mitchell gun down and

prevents this, this plane getting making it to the West,

he should go out with Order of Lenin, right?

Yeah, he's a. He's a.

Hero, He's a hero of the party. He's a hero of the of the SSR.

So like, you know, he's got a lot riding on him, but we don't

know anything about him. We don't really know anything

about him. We, we have like we, we know

more actually, ironically about the original pilot who gets

bumped off. Yeah, yeah.

So I feel like if they've made more of the stakes between these

two pilots, and sure, there's the the other side of the Iron

Curtain about how those guys are doing instead of just rooms with

KGB agents just delivering exposition.

If we had some character work with these two pilots, you know,

and their relationship and how and how much they care about

this, this plane, then there would have been some stakes in,

in that, in that, in that dogfight, but there weren't any.

The the book expands on the pilot that's fighting them as as

this because the pilot becomes like a POV character briefly

during the face and in his inner monologue is kind of

contemplating the fact that otherwise he's got a lot of

technical experience. The only war fighting he's done

is is where he was seconded to the Egyptians in the six day war

Gantz this like absolute Vietnam naked.

He's he's done everything and he can fly anything so.

Getting to Vietnam was good actually.

It's actually really good for us.

It helps out the cause, war for all actually, in a way we even

expect to get to. So how good was that actually?

Actually, we were completely right.

We were totally frighted to go in Vietnam because this this

incredibly non credible scenario could happen when a guy who's

really good at flying make 20 ones which were already archaic

ish by this point is gonna be able, is going to be totally

suited to fly in this plane that basically comes from space,

right? Yeah, And then the movie just

ends. So like, so he finds a real

reward missile plus the guy, and he's like, OK, Uncle Sam, I'm

coming home. And that just ends for all

credits. There's no ending.

Yeah. Well, you know what?

Look at it. You know how the book ends, Man

I. Don't know how the next book

begins, but go on. Look, it ends as abruptly as the

film. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Except at least it says, oh, well, I'm going to head home by

flying towards, like, Stockholm, then getting in the wake of a

British Airways flight from Stockholm to London.

Then I'm going to land. Off I go now.

Bye. Bye.

OK, guys. Let's just take a little break

there and we'll come back for some categories.

The. OK, welcome back.

So categories we'll start as always, we do without with

casting and casting on this movie is crazy.

This this movie is replete with that guys.

Not, not not many ladies, but a lot of that guys.

So there's more ladies in the film than there are in the book.

By the way. It is one of those 1970s thrill

as bad as just the boys. Just the dudes.

Just guys being dudes, guys dying in the Soviet Union.

Just guys being guys, guys being miserable, guys eating borscht

guys. Guys getting beaten to theft by

the KGB. Men will Men will get beaten to

death in KGB interrogations rather than go to therapy.

So the first guy here. So some of these people I would

say don't count as that guys. This first one is Freddie Jones.

I mentioned him earlier on. He plays Kenneth Aubrey, the SIS

guy, not that guy, but he's a stalwart of British cinema,

television and stage. He was in Kroll.

How do you get that up there? Straight away?

He plays Junior in Kroll. He is bites in the Elephant Man.

So like the carnival caller. Horrible guy in that he's Fufa

Hawat in June 1984. Yeah.

And he's also in Wild at Heart, played a plays guy called George

Kovich. So that's three David Lynch

films this guy's in. Amazing.

Yeah, amazing, right? Also his TV work he was in, he

was a heartbeat. Yes, yes he was.

In a heartbeat, he was. In a heartbeat, I've got to say

something, man. This is the one thing that's

always on my mind. I remember the pilot episode of

Heartbeat had full frontal nudity.

Really. Pilot episode of Heartbeat had

full frontal nudity. Our memories of heartbeat are

wildly different. Yeah, big old, big old, big old

like. But it was Claude Greengrass.

Yeah, No, no. What was that?

It was it was a man guys, Mrs Full from all unity in the final

episode of sort of remember what they took from you.

Remember what they took from us like.

What's her name? Cusack.

Jesus. Wow, is it?

Leave Cusack. Freddie Jones also appeared in D

Ellen Pascoe, which is a British cop drama.

But I mentioned that because Warren Clark is our next guy who

plays Pavel Lupinskoy. We've talked about a few times

already. He's known probably most

especially to American a contingent probably known most

as dim in a cockpit orange. Yeah.

He's also in top secret with Al Kilmer and he's also Scar in

Hawk the Slayer. So holy.

So if you don't like Hawk the Slayer, OK, that let's give

Cruel a try. I.

I actually feel remiss for not realising that he was in Hawk

the Slayer. Yeah, he's also in the Warren

Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, famous flop Ishtar as well.

Yeah, he was in, he, he was in an, he was in an episode of

Lewis. Yep, he was.

I've got some more. He was on, He was on.

He was in. The Alec Guinness, Tinker,

Tailor Soldier, Spy. He was in Coronation Street and

then then we hear some proper 1970s like standard stable of

acting jobs. He was in a the Aniden line, The

Sweeney Z cars. But then lastly, he was in the

remake, not the original. The remake of Poldark, the one

with the hot dwarf from The Hobbit in.

The hot dwarf. I forgot he's.

I forgot everyone knows what we're talking about.

Small legs Mcsexy Men, the hot dwarf from The Hobbit.

Why does it hurt so much? Because it's really Yeah, No,

no, no, no, no. The.

Was was Oren the one who's going to be sexy?

No, One of one. Of no the the the prissy one got

the handsome 1 the prissy one the one.

The one who was. Philly or something or Gilly or.

So it was Philly, and Kelly was one of them.

I'm. Gonna have to look at it.

Yeah, yeah. Was he the guy who was in Being

Human? Yes.

And he was in, yes. He played the vampire and being

human. Aiden Turner, who played Kelly.

There we go. There we go.

Right next, next guy. Sorry fucking that guys as I'm

totally wild now in tangents. I think it's insane that we

almost had a Hobbit trilogy when Sherwood played Philly and

Killy. Oh my God, yeah.

I mean, I'm not happy with one we got, but that would have been

worse probably. I mean, may I present you

Jedward playing Philly and Kelly and Tom Waits doing the Voice of

Smoke? I would have taken Tom Waits in

the voice of smoke. What could have had that?

Gemma Del Toro wanted Jedward as Philly and Kelly, and he wanted

Tom Waits through the voice of smoke.

Do you think he'd messed up for that point or do you think that

was like, really don't know? Or he just observed them from

afar and was like, that can't be real, but I love that.

I think it's like. I think he's like, I've got to

get these guys. But I will need a really big

stick to use on them, like constantly, because kick, kick,

because they'll be like, I'm really, I'm killing it together.

We're yeah, that's magic. Tom Wits having to keep them in

line and make up. Shut up.

Like shut up, kid. Stop improvising, stick to the

script, don't go off book. Strapped.

You gotta have kids. I'm going to go down to the

junkyard and play some sheet metal.

What's he building in there? What's he directing in there?

What the Hell's he directing in there?

It's certainly not a novella for the kids.

Next. That guy is my favourite.

Ronald Lacey, who plays the scientist Smolovsky Simolovsky,

far and away the most famous for his role is Midget Toot in

Riders of the Lost Ark. The Gestapo guy also however was

in the Peter Weller amazing movie The Adventures of Bukharu

Banzai Across the 8th Dimension and he's also Ecole in Red

Sonya. But did you know he was also

uncredited as Heinrich Himmler in Indiana Jones in The Last

Crusade? Holy shit, no way man.

Yeah, so there's a bit. So obviously the book burning

sequence where in the accident against the grill diary signed

by Hitler, he's there in the background for like a couple of

shots, Yeah. That's amazing.

Comedy fans, probably primarily United Kingdom comedy fans, will

also know him as the baby Eden Bath of Bishop of Bath and Wells

from Blocker Two. Yeah.

Yes. He's great.

Incredible, incredible scenes. We have another Engineer Jones

connection, so the next one is Wolf Karla, who plays KGB

Chairman Andropov. He is one of the main Nazis and

Raiders who get his head exploded at the end.

He's also a Nazi general in Band of Brothers and he's like a

really good speech towards the end of it where the Germans are

surrendering and he gives a speech to his own troops about

the nobility of surrendering and Big Brothers in arms and what

kind of stuff. He also played Arno Schwimmer in

The Boys from Brazil and he played not a Nazi, but a German

commander in Wonder Woman with that terrible Zionist and overly

bad actor. Go Gurdo just had a just had a

stick on one of the ribs there while I had the opportunity next

that guy. I've got so many mate.

Nigel Hawthorne plays Peter Varovic.

We mentioned him already most famous boy.

His portrayal is in the Madness of King George, but also

primarily his role is some Humphrey Appleby and yes,

minister and yes, Prime Minister might be more famous to

Americans as Doctor Raymond Cocktail and Demolition Man, but

he's his career has been over the place.

He he was in Dad's Army, he was in warship town, he was in

Gandhi. He had A and he also had an

uncredited role as an insurance man passerby in Monty Python's

The Meaning of Life. I've got a couple left, Hugh

Fraser, who's also and this is one of the Russians known to

many as Captain Hastings and the long running Proro series of

films for ITV. He also appeared in many of the

Sharp films as well as The Dick of Wellington, a taking away

from David Trauten. But fans of our niche Tom Clancy

thrillers will also definitely know him as that rat bastard or

Watkins in Patriot Games. Yes.

It's all connected. Door connected.

He also had a tiny role in Ridley Scott's first film, The

Duellists, which I think is an amazing film and everyone should

watch. Final two.

We've got Kenneth Coley, who played Colonel Kentasky, as you

mentioned, Admiral Admiral Piett from Star Wars.

That's Empire, Empire Strikes Backs in Return of Jedi.

He's also to play Jesus in Monty Python's The Life of Brian,

isn't it? We have John Ratzenberger, who's

one of the US submariners, obviously Cliff from Cheers, the

Pig and Toy Story Ham. He also had a he also had a

small role and the Empire Strikes Back as well in the

Battle of Hoth. And then finally, Clive

Merrison, who plays Major Lanyev.

He was a headmaster in The History Boys, but also he's Mark

Corrigan stars in Peep Show. So on the Christmas special,

he's the one who's like cauliflower is traditional.

Incredible. So that is it.

That's like what's cast. Stacked cast?

What's stacked cast man? Yeah, amazing and.

In incredible scenes. Do you have any more that we

that might have missed or anything?

To be honest, I think you've hit everyone that I was going to

even reference. Quotes from the movie Have you

got any favourite quotes? Yes, so my my favourite one was

don't say anything. Your words would be useless,

maybe even insulting. Just fly the damn plane.

I think it's brilliant. That's good.

That's Warren Clark's character, isn't it?

Absolutely. Yeah.

In the book, it's very similar as well.

There's only a few words different.

Pavel has no illusions of anything good coming of this.

Even though the plane's going to get taken away in the end,

Pavel's still going to have a bleak fan, you know, But just

just just like the playing man, just, you know, whatever.

And it's fine with that. He's peaceful.

Then he's like, I mean, he is one of the force and the force

is one of him, you know? Like he has a kind of a resigned

attitude to like how how he lives.

He's like, there's a there's a there's a similar quote that

that kind of matches that, which is that's when they're driving

the van still and he's like, they're having a conversation.

And he says fighting City Hall, as you put it, is a freezing we

do not enjoy. And which is really similar kind

of thing of like, look, this is just this is just my lot in

life. We're going to do this thing and

I'm probably going to die horribly, but.

Yeah. What proceeds that is made

against the one which is don't you Jews ever get tired of

fighting City Hall? There's a one that I really

like, which is I think it's it says, it says on IMDb, it's book

calls. But I think it I wasn't sure

about that. I thought it was Yeah, maybe

that's right. As a quote.

It sounds, it sounds a bit like, you know, when I'm the 1931

Frankenstein movie where he's electric shocks and then the

doctor Frankenstein's like he's like he's a lie.

He's a lie by God, he's a lie. Now I know what it feels like to

be God. You know what bit there's a bit

like that, which like it's like rhythmically kind of quotes it

where the RFR operators like, say, radar tracking reports

signs of a staggered sector scramble, Northern and southern

border squadrons, red Air Force heavily coded traffic between

red banner fleets. Activity indicates A definite

lift off. And then the guy's like, he's

up. Great mother of God, he's up.

Yeah. Now I know what it feels like to

be a great mother of God. I love that.

So that's a that's a cool little cool little nod to like Classic

Cinema. When Dancer beaten Branovich and

Branovich take to your smoke, he's like, no, not for years.

Doctor Branovich throws a pack of cigarettes on the table.

Learn again. Now it's like the the whole

thing, right? The whole film has this air of

absolute Slavic misery over us. They're the best bits.

It's. They are the best bits.

When when the when the light cracks in through through the

gaps, like like stars puncturing the dark peak night, It's when

it's up to worst. Like like the last lines of the

movie is Gant and he says talking to himself, punching in

the coordinates and coming home. And it's like, that's so shit.

I like to hear about it when everyone was miserable.

Yeah, like like I said, let us smoke dickhead.

You know, listen dude, we're enough miserable totalitarian

state that grinds down the bodies, minds and souls of all

its citizens. Smoking if you got them.

He has a pack of 20 fines. I want to see three of those

disappear in the next 7 minutes. You know you need to get a 20

day habit instantly, right? Like, like, like now, you know,

do it for America. Needle drops.

Needle drops. There, there isn't really needle

drop. There's no so loose with it.

It's Maurice Jar's score, which is not his career best work.

But I felt really like, I felt like a terrible trace of

thinking that because you know, I, I love film music and I love

Maurice Jar's scores and other movies, as I, as I mentioned,

but Maurice Jar himself, I had this to say about the movie, he

said, referencing his score. Clint Eastwood is an interesting

man, very nice, very charming, but he does not understand too

much about music and film. Jar said he's a fan of jazz.

On his latest picture he does his own music.

It sounds like putting him down. It sounds like putting him down,

but it's not that. He likes He likes sound effects,

but not music. It was not one of his best

pictures. Not a good film.

I like the man. Absolutely adorable, no temper.

I enjoyed very much working with him.

But the film was not interesting from the music point of view so.

I'm I'm just getting mentally flash banged by the first time I

watched Gran Torino and and just like the song at the end of it.

No Gran Torino. Like if you smoked too hard, you

pitched too hard. It's what you didn't kill you in

this one. That movie solved racism.

You haven't got racism anymore. I.

Did I? Did I?

Did you know what? Gran Torino in Green Book fixed

it. Run Gran Torino Solved Racism by

by by. Clint Eastwood showed them that

it's absolutely woke to call your best friend Polish slurs.

Hey, you're done, bollock. IM DB trivia for Craig Thomas's

1983 Only the year After sequel to Firefox.

The novel Firefox Down is dedicated to Clint Eastwood and

the dedication reads for Clint Eastwood, pilot of the Firefox.

The original plan for the movie was to use a Swedish JA 37 Wigan

jet fighter as a Soviet aircraft, but the Swedish

government refused permission, which is where that designer.

Of give me a moment. I'll put, I'll, I'll, I'll put a

picture of one up for that. Because his role in the movie

required him to speak some Russian.

Clint Eastwood prepared by studying the language resources

provided by the US military's Defence Language Institute.

I don't know if they were tapes or books, but obviously all the

Russians were Cowboys, so. Yeah, or, or how long you

studied them for? I mean you studied them briefly.

It's like he he was aware of their existence.

I mean I mean his Russians still probably better than mine but

the cowboy accent though was great.

Can't believe no one said unknown technology bleat yet.

We've already mentioned the Foxhound that got stolen and

flew into Japan. Yeah, in this movie, General

Vladimirov assures the First Secretary.

No pilot will risk the Moscow defences, however invisible he

might be, to explain why Khan isn't flying over Moscow,

however, on the May the 28th, 1987, so five years later.

Sasna guy. The Sasna guy.

Yes, young German pilot for your Cessna into the Soviet airspace,

landed on Red Square and then was arrested.

Amazing. When I saw that bit I was like,

hold on, chronologically, how many years is it until some

random German dude decides to do the funniest thing?

Do you think like this? Like German lad watched in the

cinema and he's like challenge accepted.

I really wanted Sonia to be here so we could talk about how this

would have went down in Germany. And then we're going to bring

this up Back to the Future Part 2.

The opening cloud shots were originally used for this movie.

And then finally the Firefox rolls over the same guard twice

when it's blasting into out of the hangar.

So I might, I might see where you can find that, put some

video of that down there as well.

Definitely. Right before we do Nuts and the

peanut Gallery, I was going to talk about ML Coer, MZ Coer, and

MH Coer for this movie, primarily so I can talk about

the ML Coer, which is already been written for us.

There's a sequel to this called called Firefox Down.

So the plot picks up immediately from the end of this, but what

happens is he punches his coordinates.

He's heading back home, but it turns out that his aircraft had

sustained a lot of damage during the the fight just to land it

again. He lands on on a frozen lake in

neutral Finland where upon the weight of the aircraft causes a

break for the ice and then it sinks into the lake.

And then because God forbid this guy flies a plane for the first

like 3/4 of a Firefox novel so so he gets out the lake.

But then he's immediately captured by the KGB.

He's taken back to the Soviet Union, rendering the entire last

movie irrelevant. And then a NATO task force steps

up attempts to recover the Firefox from from Finland before

it's location to be discovered by the Soviets.

Meanwhile, we cut to Moscow. In Moscow again, it's

interrogated by the KGB now by Colonel Dimitri Pradhan, who had

its minor role in in in Firefox. And there's a Soviet Air Force

general, that guy we we saw in the movie.

So they're they're they're interrogating him.

But it turns out the entire time of the head of the KGB has a

girlfriend called Anna, who is this entire time CIA double

agent going by the name Burgoyne.

Basically a lot of stuff happens and they they do recover the the

plane from from the lake and Gant does escape.

He steals, he steals what's what's he steal an an, an I-24

helicopter and then is pursued by Migs into Norway managed to

to land and then eventually heads gets the then eventually

heads to RAF Scampton at the end of it.

And that's where it ends. It ends with them getting to

Arya Scampton, which is crazy. Arya Scampton, by the way, for

for listeners, if they're not aware is the home, what was the

home of the Red Arrows? It was also the home of the Dam

Buster squadron as well. Now it's up for sale on the open

market and as of the first of last month planned a £42 million

plan to make it into homes for asylum seekers fell through.

So it's just sitting there having had a lot of money spent

on it, but not going anywhere. So interesting anyway, MD Co

rewind he he hasn't sustained masters damage.

He isn't going to land in Finland.

What he's going to do instead is he's going to he's going to

refuel. He's going to do the thing that

they're expecting the least and head to the east.

And he manages to skate his way along the top of the Barents

Sea, having already made prior arrangements to defect to the

Far East to China, where he delivers the the plane and the

Chinese and the Russians together have the the new super

modern thought controlled Firefox aircraft.

And then the balance of power shifts like 20 years too early

to to China as the now dominating military and economic

power in the world. Boom.

Holy fuck. MH good.

So very difficult to kind of get something, any kind of hilarity

basically out out of this film. And I love it for it.

I love the fact that you can't get, you can't, you can't really

get jokes out of this film so much.

I mean, it's like kind of you can't, you can't like drag

comedy out of Rogue One, can you?

You can't make a joke about. I mean, at least I can feel like

the episodes of Ando had a few things.

You can make a yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But also he's horribly like everyone else does.

So the only way really to get any kind of hilarity out of this

is to work from here. Mitchell Gand is approached by

the US government in Alaska S California.

They come and find him in Kalafaska and and Alaska Phonia

and he freaks out. He houses for Oh my God, I'm

having flashbacks to near palm and people die and burn to death

and stuff. And he spends the rest of the

film basically just lying on the floor just like twitching and

having having like horrendous around his flashbacks. the US

government goes to Plan B. So while he's having this

horrendous set of confabulations in which he fantasises about

himself going to rush hour and stealing the plane and

everything like that, the US government simply goes to Plan B

and sounds right. We're actually just going to

announce that we know of the existence of Firefox.

I'm just going to say there's like a $50 million bounty to any

pilot who's going to defect with it.

I mean, precedent for that because a Sylvia pilot that

defected with, with advanced Soviet fire plane without the

promise of money and a job for Lockheed Martin.

So the US government very happily put out this like big,

big statement. We will pay $50,000,000 to

anyone who flies the Firefox to the US.

And indeed, you get the whole book halt scene when he said, Oh

my God, multiple launches. He's airborne, he's airborne.

Whoever stolen its airborne, yet the Firefox is not seen.

Firefox dot go to America the next day.

The headlines are ablaze. News going nuts.

Someone's jumped up $51 million. The Principality of Andorra now

has a Firefox. Andorra becomes the world's

leading superpower with its fighter player, with its and

radar technology. It's now a tripolar world,

right? It's the Soviets and it's

motherfucking Andorra. But we where is the second

Firefox? Why?

Listen man, I have one word for your buddy, Luxembourg.

I was going to say, but if if we, if we could link this in

with the with the Princess Diaries universe, the Princess

Diaries cinematic universe and and Genovia gets against the

second Firefox. Genovia, the land I call my

home. Yeah.

Oh, God. And then and then Anne Hathaway

decides that she wants to become a fighter pilot.

Well, better. Yeah.

Better. Yeah.

A young, like obviously it's because it's 1980s.

Julie Andrews as as Queen Clarice Rinaldi.

That's it. Is is a Hector Alonzo as as a Co

pilot? And just from then on out, the

true Cold War is just between 2 little European.

Principality Andora and Genovia. Is now a bystander.

Everybody's nuclear arsenals the mean thick because Andora and

Genovia have the world's two greatest most anti radarist

fighters ever. God, amazing.

Good grief. What do you think is the most

egregious oversell of the military industrial complex in

this movie? Obviously it's the plane, but

like how I guess. Over cells of it the the anti

radar is a gigantic over cell for a start.

The fact that it. Doesn't make sense.

It doesn't make. Sense it doesn't, it defies

physics. Yeah, the fact that the weird

combination over cell and under cell, the fact that the plane

doesn't appear to have normal flare expenses, but also down,

but it does have counter measures.

It has the whole hill section that parsley jettison and

creates A flare like hotter than the sun in the and and it's like

just how fast, dude, how fast, how fast?

Oh, yes, yeah, yeah. Like so that's a.

Military missile threat. Yeah, oversaw and yourself.

I need to find out if this is a credible oversell or not.

Make credible and non credible the submarine, the motor one

submarine that reload that refuels the Firefox right?

Yes. Yeah, it's it's forward torpedo

rooms and forward crew compartments have been sealed

and flooded with aviation fuel so that they can fuel up the

play in middle lands. Credible.

On on. OK, I'll have to have to know

more about the, the Sabrina's makeup.

But I would generally say that if you was a right, so

submarines in any craft, right, hinges on, on the principles of

what we call ship tech, right, ship stability.

And that that's governed by the opposing forces of, of buoyancy

and, and gravity and what's called the meta centre.

So that's how things act on the surface.

So so ships and stuff acts on the surface.

And then with that you have like the longitudinal stability and

the latitude and stability. So how much it rocks backwards

and forwards, How much rocks side to side kind of that I say

stability. I don't mean how much it rocks.

I mean how right, how, how much, sorry, What if you were to apply

healing moment to something? So if you turn it like right

side like that, how much how much it wants to right itself

again? So how much buoyancy opposes the

the gravity If if those forces are.

Exactly. Equals, so it's neutral,

neutrally buoyant and the Mesa centre basically is exactly the

same point as the centre for gravity.

What happens is you'll move like that and then it won't want to

correct itself. And then if you typically burn a

capsizes, it'll just do it that if the, if the meta centre is

opposite, you've, you, let's say you've raised the centre of

gravity above the meta centre. So you've, you've put a lot of

weight up high or you've removed weight from below.

Then it will actually naturally want to correct itself and go

upside down and it will want to capsize.

Most times what we're looking, well, all the time, what we're

looking for is to have a centre of gravity that's a reasonable

position, but the meta centre significantly high above it so

that if it has a healing moment, it'll correct itself and more

violently it does that, even though it might feel unstable at

the time. The more violently it does that,

the bigger the rule is that that that's, that's actually being

that's actually being more stable because it wants to crit

itself more and quicker, right? So, so that's how things act on

the surface. That's one thing, OK.

And I'm not a submariner, so I don't know too much about

subtech for under the sea, right?

OK. But the the other thing you want

to think about this applies to on the surface as well actually,

just as you do with latitudinal stability.

Another thing that you need to do here is you want to have your

centre of gravity be on the centre line of the vessel.

You want to have that weight distributed evenly so that when

you apply healing movement to something, it corrects upright

where it's designed to be because that's the most

efficient for how to drive. So ships are designed to be

longitudinally like very stable. So they have a pointy front end

so they can cut through the sea. And then they, and they're very

good at keeping like stability, directional stability.

So if you pile them ahead, they want to keep going in the

direction you've piled them in. And then when you take your, you

move your rudder or go in that direction and you correct the

rudder, it'll keep going in the direction you put it in.

That's, that's what it's designed to do.

OK. The other thing you want to do

is you want to have the weight evenly across the ships, the

thwart ships so that you don't, you don't have what's called a

condition of Lolb. So, so you don't have it sitting

naturally, like at an angle. So let's say you've got some

heavy stores here, you're causing this side to go down and

this has to come up to compensate because of buoyancy

and, and and mass. That's inefficient because now

one of your props is probably sticking out the water a little

bit or is not in the right place.

You've got other forces acting down here.

The drag is different. So now the ship naturally wants

to turn a little bit, so you'll have to counteract that.

So you're using more fuel because you're trying to

counteract something and then it's less efficient.

So that's why you don't want to do that.

But also it's not stable. And if you were to flood this a

bit more, the chances of the meta centre meeting on a funny

skew with angle and and tipping over or higher, the chances you

are you've got a greater chance of capsizing it in that way.

OK, so that's bad. The other one is this is our

ship still this this is forward. This is aft is you want these to

be trimmed evenly as well as bit how they were designed.

Because again, if you are digging like this, then these

aren't getting as much power. They're pushing you down whilst

the ship wants to go up again. So you're getting more

resistance from the the sea than you would be up forward.

It's shipping more sea over the top of it.

This is all very bad. It's all very inefficient.

And then conversely, if again, if it's trimmed daft and again

the ship is sticking out a little bit, then again the hull

isn't doing as it was designed to do.

And you'll have a similar situation with water shipping

over the back end. Or again, more inefficient use

of you'll have a loss of directional stability as well.

And all those kind of things. To your question, those

compartments were designed to operate at a certain kind of

weight in the in the weight distribution across the craft is

designed to be that way for a reason.

That said, warships and ships generally are also designed to

be able to partially flood. But the way that's done, we have

what we call carpet plots in the in the Royal Navy for what's

what's combination of compartments on the ship will

that you can withstand the flooding before we do what I

talked about earlier on, which was taking your centre of

gravity, yeah and your meta centre and swapping them over.

It is worse to add weight high. It is worse to have compartments

that are on or immediately below the water line.

Flood is better to flood the compartments lower.

So if I had, let's say I've got a ship that's got like 6 decks

below the water line and like two maybe 4 above, let's say

sneaky, sneaky Uranians put like a limpet mine on the side of it.

It's a big motion ship. Put a limpet mine on the side,

but it's out of the water line because I've come up on a jet

ski and the Bangor on the zoomed away again and I've got a hole

just through the water line and it's taken in water and I'm

flooding like 2 deck. Okay, yeah, it is infinitely

better. It almost negates the the whole

thing if I drain that water down to like 6 deck into like where

the bilge is down on 6 deck because because you're you drain

your water down to a a deeper and a narrower compartment

because if it's deeper, the the weight of it has less impact.

Basically because you're you'll bring your centrifug gravity

down where it should be instead of up.

Up is bad, down, down is good. OK.

And narrower because you want to avoid something that's called a

free surface. OK, so a free surface flood.

If you think about your bathtub like a home and you start

jostling the water backwards and forwards because that water's

sloshing backwards and forwards, you'll start getting like waves

forming. And then the frequency of those

waves will change as they hit off against each other.

And then what's happening is this bathtub now in your

otherwise stable house is really unstable.

So like if you think about having one compartment like that

in a ship, basically what you're doing now is bringing it back to

again the metacentry and the, and the, and the interaction

between metacentre and the centre for gravity and stuff.

It's now you have this one weird bit where the energy is going

backwards and forwards and it's not dissipating and it's because

the ship is rocking as well. So every time the ship rocks,

it's going with it. But now in this other small

space it's banging backwards and forwards and stuff.

You're now going, it's like it wants to go this way, but

instead of naturally going back this way, there's another bit of

reverberation in this compartment.

It's banging it back this way again and then that way and it

can't catch a break and it's just like all over the place.

And this is wobbly and then that's really unstable and that

can cause a condition of capsize as well.

So that's really bad. So that's why you want to render

compartment solid by completely filling them up so that that

effect isn't there anymore. Now it's just a dead weight and

you want to put it in a deeper, narrower compartment to minimise

the effects. The other thing you can do is

you could put a false book head. You can like break that up.

So by halving that compartment's size, you quarter the effect

because now instead of 1 big effect happening backwards and

forwards in this big compartment, you've got two way

smaller effects happening in the same place.

And that basically brings it down by 1/4.

And that's quick mass. But but yeah, it's back to the

submarine. So I see all that because ships

are designed to be able to withstand flooding of

compartments and it's designed in really big handfuls.

So you can whilst it's happening, whilst you're dealing

with an internal paddle, go right.

I can afford to lose that compartment and the and the

assumption is that the compartment is from deck to deck

head, completely gone, lost, full sealed.

That's what the book suggests, yeah.

The being flooded the forward torpedo room and the forward

crew quarters. So I don't know enough about

that particular class of submarine to say whether or not

and I wouldn't be able to find that kind of information.

And I'm sure it's probably like somewhere in books in Annapolis

and Janes, but Janes wouldn't have it in Janes wouldn't have

it in me. It's it's not, it's not even

it's not city knowledge, right? It's, it's, these are like

classified ships drawings. So I couldn't tell you

specifically for that class of submarine.

But what I can tell you is it's unlikely for a compartment that

large to be crew quarters to be able to, to withstand a complete

rendering solids without a significant impact on, on on its

ability to trim itself as a submarine.

Obviously, both those compartments are up for us.

Could it, could you do it difficult, I think to safely do

that. Could the could the boat remain

stable on the, on the surface of the water doing that?

I highly doubt it without having an unsolvable condition of lol.

Can you trim it forward or you'd have to do some serious moving

of stuff around and counterweighting.

That would be the thing I would suggest so, so you can make the

whole boat heavier by counterweighting the back to

make up for it. That's something you could do.

But at that point, is the boat able to surface and smash

through the, the the Arctic ice again?

I don't know. So the the the only things I'd

be concerned about. The second thing I've cat.

Jesus Christ, mate, so I've cat. This is so incredibly fireable

that the modifications we'd need to make to be able to pump that

into the boat securely, just the fumes alone are an issue.

Like, yeah, how do you get it out of that compartment as well?

And so there's a lot of like refitting of the of the boats

people to do that feels like to me.

I mean, Jesus, what do you do instead?

Like do you tow like a big fuel tanker behind you?

That's what I was. Thinking it's like tow it or

have have have have some kind of big bladder of it I guess from

the. Yeah, that's an option, I think.

Yeah, toing A partially submerged body.

So essentially the submarine makes it like 90% of the way on

its own. Steam picks up at the last

minute from a ship nearby. And then, yeah, Foxtrot Soska to

the to the rendezvous with it on the surface.

That would be what I would think would be the sensible way of

doing it. But yeah, interesting.

Because I mean, basically, obviously the, the guy who was

the technical consultant, I think, I guess on the book was a

guy called Perry Jones, who was, who was an RAF guy, right?

And so I think it's clear that he wasn't like a Navy guy with

the fact that we've just got this incredibly dangerous setup

of a submarine partially full of some of the most volatile

aviation. Fuel.

This is not infinities as well. This is like a time where you

could probably still Spock up a tab on a on a on.

Supreme 70's. The book was written in.

Yeah, there you are. I've got I've got a few more

categories here. I don't know if we want to do

more. Let's do it.

A few more categories. Let's go.

OK. What?

This movie have been better if it had Jack Ryan talk to Richard

Kimble or President James Marshall in it.

It's got to be it's got to be Jack out of these three.

I think so. But but but it's like the 70s,

isn't it? So he's probably still got his

back injury and hasn't even made it into the the company yet.

So maybe because I mean, the the book itself is a little bit

alternate reality ish when it kinds of lean kind of leans into

the idea that like because of the Sol treaty, nuclear war is

not much of A threat. And like that's that's why like

this this this fire this like fight is such a massive threat

because it's the ultimate strike vehicle, right?

Because it's like, because it's got anti radar.

I can be fucking anywhere. Maybe Jack Ryan, Lieutenant Jack

Ryan of the US Marines is now a pilot in, in in the US Marines.

And he too was flying an experimental aircraft code named

Millennium Falcon. And just just as Clint Eastwood

is about to get hammered by some some Russian mooks, all of a

sudden the planes get take out from behind.

And then you've got you've got Chuck Ryan flying the plane,

this incredibly souped up modernised cargo plane that

looks like a bit of a hunky junk on the outside.

But it's got it where it counts, kid.

And it's just this like barrage of fire and of course, like gun

turds being operated by Doctor Richard Kimble, who who's got a

bad throat. She was like electric back, that

kind of noise. It's just you see where I'm

going with this space. Yeah.

So there we go. There we go.

It's a surprise. Would this movie benefit from a

weird little scruffy guy played by Peter Falk?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

I mean, it always is, right? So. 100%.

So I've got, I've got and I I've got a couple of ideas for this.

So the obvious one, right, is that he is, he's the opposite

number of the MI Six guy. So he's like an old like chain

smoking company guy. He's also there got like, Oh my

God, he's got up, he's in the air.

That's cool. That's what that's what that's

one. The other idea I had was that

that yeah, sure he can speak Russian because his mum was

Russian. But actually he needs like more

Russian lessons. So while he's training at like

the Air Force Base, he's out there getting doing some

training. He's also doing some Russian

language classes. And it's actually Peter Falk

who's teaching him Russian. And at the very end when he's

when he's doing his like trench front, but instead of just his

own voice saying think in Russian, it's like it's like,

hey, one more thing. You got to think in Russian,

kid. You got to.

Think in Russian and then he and then he's like.

Yeah, I think my. Wife, my wife is always telling

me. Thinking Russian.

Thinking Russian. You know, did you know Peter

Falk actually tried to join the CIA?

No. Wow.

I was like not come up before. Peter Falk applied for a job

with the CIA but was turned down because of his union membership.

Oh my God, because he thought he was a stinking commie.

God, I'm communist. Can you imagine what could have

had a world in which Peter Falk wasn't an actor but was possibly

the fucking greatest CIA officer ever?

There's many worlds theory manner and we're pretty fast to

live to live in that world because he would still have like

the we had all squid, because obviously he would still have

like lost his eye as a child man.

Doesn't better think about what we might have missed but not

having him, but also, you know, if you were like a part of the

South American cartels, like what you might gained from

interacting with him. What was this guy with the death

squads that is just like Peter Vouchers?

Like one more thing. You know when my wife kills

Labour organisers down in the Global South?

He's just flown in from trying to get for forgetting weapons to

the to the brave freedom fighters of the Muhajuddin help

helping helping helping out CC Wilson get man pads get man pads

to the Afghanis. It's.

Like, I would just come back from, you know, flying out a

truckload of Stingers to our friends and the Mujahideen and

just magic, just like, like kind of strolling through the door,

like I've just got back to Afghanistan.

He's like picking all the Afghan dust off his little boots.

And he's like, right, what's the next job?

But came, came, got the guy I taught Russian to is now

stealing a plane. OK.

On the on the subject of this, would this movie have benefited

from Jeffrey Wright 100%? So if not Peter Folk, then

Jeffrey Wright for me. I think he also could have done

the same. Well, he he brings a gravitas, a

natural gravitas to him, which I think would do a nice kind of

points to, to the sort of, as you say, bumbling, cigar

smoking, Brandy's quaffin kind of kind of British MI six guy.

So. It actually even dark.

I kind of showed when like you kind of crossed reference it

with a book and the SIS sacrifice as a British citizen

for this plane. Yeah, that's a plane, dude.

That's a fucking aeroplane. It's a plane that's going to go

straight to America. You're going to get a sniff of

me. You guys can sit there with your

tornadoes and your English lettering.

Lightnings are about to be fake obsolete anyway and fucking suck

it. America's going to have the

Super fighter. I will say that 1980 was a great

year for the Hurry Jump jet. Just saying.

It was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pretty good. Yeah.

I saw the wall fly out and I saw the wall fly back in again.

Is this is this movie pro or anti CIA?

I think it's pretty obviously pro, especially the sequel.

Strongly, strongly pro CIA? Absolutely.

The most pro? I mean, would you expect

anything less from from Clint Eastwood?

It's the most it's the most company man movie.

Yeah, it's, it's tremendous. It's tremendously pro CIA.

Before I do the next and ultimate category, have you got

any notes from the Peanuts gallery, Rory, that you'd like

to share with us? You better fucking do so the

notes in the peanut gallery when I go through user generated

content that other people make and find reviews on letterbox

that I find funny. 2 1/2 stars. Dad mode challenge.

Take off your pants, get drunk alone, and watch the most boring

Clint Eastwood movie you can find.

I miss my girlfriend very much. One contemporary review of this

film likens it to being boring. Just like the Agar sanction but

the Agar sanction rules. This is a fun Cold War Espadar

stroller and that reviewer is an idiot.

Like the Cold War thriller steeped in shadow and 80 synths.

Dislike the supposedly cool ass jet stuff.

Why is it so long? Please, my time on earth grows

short. Clint Eastwood.

Clint Eastwood speaks a mirror Russian and steals a brain

controlled playing four stars. Football stars.

Someone gives it a two star review with just the words

Blu-ray. Blu-ray.

Blurry. Here we have this pilot with

crippling PTSD. Should we get him help?

No, let's send him deep cover to the USSR to steal a jet you

control with your mind. Bet I I have one here that is

incredibly horny. Two hours of espionage and all I

could think about was what else Clint's hands could operate and

shout out to his facial expressions while flying the

stolen plane, which also made my stomach do the thing.

Maybe I'm becoming too comfortable on this app, but his

daddy energy made me write this smiley faced emoji, up and down

arrow emoji and a sparkly emoji. These words have been said and

now can't be put back. But yeah, so there we go.

It's got a lot of people giving opinions about the the kind of

match up with what I said, how the the thriller aspects of it

age better than than the dog fighting and stuff.

Right. I have to go off the back of

what you kind of said there. Dean Chavez award for missed

opportunity in the movie. So my my one for this is the

movie can't quite decide whether it's I mean, Top Gun hasn't come

out yet. OK, so that that revolutionises

the and makes incredibly sexy the fighter jet movie.

OK, before then, movies about military aviators are like

Battle of Britain and stuff. It's all about like, oh, men and

dog fights or like, you know, when was I an eagle?

Don't know. This was which was definitely

pre Ayan Eagle. Yeah, so so this movie can't

decide whether it's like an action movie about a fighter jet

or a spy espionage villa. So there's there's two ways they

could have gone here, like sort of so as the missed opportunity,

they could have either made it ahead of ahead of Top Gun.

They could have made it into more of a fighter jet movie.

So they could have made more of this time in Vietnam, maybe

showed an entire mission of him as a young man in Vietnam with

some actual narrative and some stakes behind it.

They could have then showed that the impact of that and his PTSD

from that is that he has tremendous nerves.

We're getting behind the joystick of a, of a military

fire jet. Again, even though he has this,

this gift and he's the most talented pilot and he's had this

long storage career, he's now fundamentally broken.

His struggle. The, the, the, the lie that he

believes is true is that he can't fly a plane anymore.

And the truth he needs to accept is that he can fly a plane

again. And the Naruto thrusters him

doing that right. So you have the initial setup of

how he loses our ability through the horrific crash that

obviously brings him down in Vietnam.

Two, he then retrains. There's a there's a whole

sequence in the US with a military test plane where he has

to unlock his ability to fly a plane again, maybe encounter as

either a mentor or a former contemporary who is now as much

senior in rank because he stayed in or something.

And there's a conflict there he has to deal with.

And then finally there's the mission.

And we just play real short like get him into Russia.

The spying's done with somebody else helping him out.

So he's just kind of been throwed to the plane and shoved

onto the plane. And then there ends the fighter

jet movie with Dog fighting in the air.

Him now. Having to do the thing that he's

been trying to do. So like, there's there's one,

there's one version of the movie, OK, The other version of

the movie is he isn't the pilot or there is a pilot, but the

movie's not about the pilot. So it's the it's the handler who

has to get him into Russia and, and get him to the plane, his

movie. And then the movie ends with him

flying away and you're stuck with the guy on the ground.

He has to deal with getting out of Russia now.

And this one comes after him and actually, he's a sacrificial

lamb and the whole thing falls apart.

Right. But it's, it's.

And then, you know, you're talking about your bleak sort of

espionage. You're talking about the, the,

the point of view of all the, the embedded people who are

living under the York of communism.

You're talking about their experience.

This guy is down in the trenches with him.

He's down to the muck with them. Yeah.

And he could have these conversations with these people

and say, luck. Do you think I'm going to get

back to America at the end of this?

I'm like, I'm with you, I'm just as screwed as you are, like this

guy flies in the plane. There's only there's only one

seat in that plane. And then like, and then and then

you've got that movie, you know, following that guy and then what

he what he goes on to do, you know.

So for me there's like there's the missed opportunity is like

this movie kind of plays it safe.

Weirdly, it makes it makes it a pretty non remarkable espionage

for a pretty non remarkable plane movie, despite the special

effects at the time, which I grant you with advance for the

time. But there's not a there's not a

compelling story in either of those.

You could you could be a compelling story like with human

stakes for the characters involved by a few men's either

way. Absolutely.

And this opportunity that they could have had, they would meet

the final dogfight the the, the final.

And I know I keep going back to this and how it could have been

better. The Firefox is fast, it's

incredibly rapid. So the only way to catch up with

it, it's kind of Firefox. You would come from behind it

and and watch speech that Russia at the time had, I think 2

actual serviceable aircraft carriers right.

There's nothing stopping the scene in which the Russian

aircraft carrier launches planes to head towards the Firefox.

I don't need to be able to outfront it, just meet it.

You've got a head on engagement with, say a bunch of the

modernised big 29 S the heart and also those we have neglected

Yak one for one fatal things that were like like the hurry up

shit and like it's one of them go in and house a fight with

them. It's a proper totally get nasty

dogfight at it knocks the shit out of them, but it's damaged

and then bang. This is when the bad guy comes

in behind it. This is when now there's way

more risk, there's more peril because like when you're flying

the fastest plane in the world and you're being chased, by

definition, it's not going to be as as concerning as you've just

like shot down like 7.9 or whatever and you've used up all

but one of the missiles doing that.

You've maybe got 1 1/2 seconds of Canon ammunition left.

And oh shit, now comes the second Firefox.

You know, Mr. President, Mr. President, a second Firefox has

hit the screenplay. And, and that would have

there's, there's a missed opportunity to throw some other

planes in against the Firefox. I mean it it destroys a

helicopter just basically on on the deck of the ship, whatever

throws my planes in just a short superiority just to show how how

it can takedown a whole swarm of them.

But then that's when it gets ominous and serious when it

meets its match from behind. And then you have a real, real

fight that would have really excite mistakes about it.

So. Just equally match the out match

now because now he has less ammunition.

Exactly. He's like kind of behind the 8

ball and that's when a fight scene will get really fun.

That's when this would become a really nasty hairy fucking fur

ball for Dogface, and that would have been class.

Yeah, totally agreement. There's a couple of strong Ting

Chavez's there. Our final category is the

command and signals call signs of the movie.

Man, I don't know why I keep doing this.

I've not prepped any for these Gantt, right, OK, Gantt.

All I've got with Gantt is sweaty back because he sweats.

Cowboy, cowboy, Cowboys. That's good.

Literally cowboy. I wouldn't be fucking surprised

if Cowboy was as coal sign as a pilot as well.

Let's see, let's be real here. I mean, yeah, Blonde Dante

called Cowboy. Yeah, no name.

Dirty Harry. Unforgiven.

Unforgiven. Yeah.

It would be 10 years later, yeah.

That's that's the time travelling.

Alternatively, if you call them Unforgiven, why you'll know in

10 years time. Yeah, you might not like that

call sign, but your kids are going to love it.

It's your cousin Jerry. Jerry Eastwood.

Here's a new colour sign you're looking for.

Oh God. Yeah.

God, I mean, Freddie. Freddie Jones is Kenneth Aubrey

for me. Mr Toad or or Foofa.

Foofa. Yeah, yeah.

Or just or just eyebrows. Eyebrows.

Totally eyebrows. Yeah, just farmer Hobbit because

he looks like an extended Hobbit I.

Mean, who else is that? Ronald Lacey gets really

underused in this movie and often just totes.

Yeah. So I think Brucholtz would be

something like very like button down or something because he's a

very straight list guys. Straight list.

Button down or. Vanilla.

Vanilla. Vanilla, yeah.

Yeah, cool. That's all I've got.

Yeah. And so it ends.

OK, cool. So we've just been discussing

the 1982 movie Firefox, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood.

What have you got next? We've got a movie next for for

the pod already lined up. We don't because we're going to

surprise you all because since our friend and colleague Sonia

is currently lost at sea at the moment, he's getting to pick the

next film. We'll, we'll let you, we'll let

you know on the socials what the next film we've got coming up

is. Speaking of socials, so you can

always find us at on Instagram at Clear and Present Dudes,

that's right. Feel free to e-mail any queries

or movie suggestions or requests or anything like that to our new

Gmail account. So

[email protected] and like this earlier.

If you have any feedback, would you be positive?

Could you could you you could review or leave comments on

Spotify and leave reviews and rates on Apple podcasts.

Also, you can do that on wherever I should get a podcast

to be a podcast. Alex cast box, all those places

as well. That'd be much appreciated.

That would really help us out big time as we try and grow our

little podcast into something beautiful and great.

I suppose that's all that's left to say.

Rory is just you and I tonight have been.

We've been clear and present. Present dudes.

Dudes, how do we fuck up with two of us?

Every, every time, every time, every time.

We've been clear and present. Dudes, I've been Rory O'Toole,

Hazian Bait and bar. Sonya Bjergsen has been lost at

sea. Learn to smoke.

Russia needs you to.

Firefox (1982)

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