'Stealth' creeps toward credibility in second half
Jamie Foxx and Jessica Biel
Columbia Pictures
'Stealth'
Director: Rob Cohen
Stars: Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, Jamie Foxx
MPAA rating: PG-13 for intense action, some violence, brief strong language and innuendo
Two stars(2/5)
By Ed Blank
TRIBUNE-REVIEW FILM AND THEATER CRITIC
Friday, July 29, 2005
You have to figure Jamie Foxx didn't know when he signed for "Stealth" that he'd receive two Academy Award nominations early in 2005 -- one for his supporting performance in "Collateral" and one for his leading portrayal of Ray Charles in "Ray."
The latter paid off with an Oscar.
So what's he doing in the third role in what amounts to a brash, loud reimagining of TV's "The Mod Squad" -- white guy, white gal, black guy, showboating heroics?
Sure, good actors are always taking secondary parts in distinguished plays and movies. But "Stealth"? It's like "Pearl Harbor" dumbed down further.
It seems 400 of the Navy's finest applied to be the pioneer pilots of new fighter jets.
How lucky for the film that the three selected -- Josh Lucas (Lt. Ben Gannon), Kara Wade (Jessica Biel) and Henry Purcell (Foxx) -- just happen to look like the trio you'd want for a movie poster.
Capt. Dick Marshfield (Joe Morton) may have reservations about sending the mod squad on a mission before the planes are fully tested. Capt. George Cummings (Sam Shepard) respectfully tells Dick to put a lid on it. There's no time to tinker.
Besides, the insufferably egotistical poster kids will be guided by Eddie, a sphere-shaped computer with all of the aptitude and ambition of HAL, the resident Mind Of Its Own in "2001: A Space Odyssey."
The first hour of "Stealth" is so over-wound and empty it threatens to clear the house before the stronger, second half takes over.
"Stealth" is the kind of movie so fearful of its target audience's attention span that even while the kids are studying their manuals for what is to be a life-and-death mission, loud rock music blasts freely.
The kids go for sushi, make out early and often, and enjoy a sexual interlude in Thailand. Every woman who passes by is a babe.
W. D. Richter's screenplay, or what's left of it, isn't serious about these characters, their politics or anybody's loyalties.
As directed by Rob Cohen, "Stealth" is a sound blast set to a quickly cut action video, interrupted by the dialogue of people not worth listening to.
Even the moments of devastation are sliced up into such short pieces that the impact is depersonalized.
There's one genuinely tense scene that involves landing in North Korea, but it leads to a sequence so implausible that even the comparable "Behind Enemy Lines" winds up seeming more realistic in retrospect.
Give us a little credit, guys.
