The Nicolas Cage Top Gun Ripoff You Have To See To Believe
The impact of Top Gun can not be overstated, as the Tom Cruise fighter jet classic is still, decades later, a smash hit, and Top Gun: Maverick proved there’s an audience for military action to this day. But the movie’s greatest impact was felt in the wave of knock-off films that followed in its wake; some are cult classics in their own right, like Iron Eagle, and others are Fire Birds. The latter is forgotten today, but since it stars Tommy Lee Jones and Nicolas Cage as a hotshot pilot who doesn’t play by the rules, it’s the perfect lazy afternoon watch.
Expressway To The Unsafe Area
Fire Birds is Top Gun but with an Apache helicopter (the AH-64 Apache, to be precise) instead of the F-14 Tomcat, and that could be the end of the plot summary right there, as that’s about the entire thought process put into the film by the studio. Instead, the film is about a joint task force trying to take down a South American cartel hiding in the mountains that is being protected by a mercenary using a Scorpion attack helicopter (unlike the Apache; this is fictional).
A Pilot That Doesn’t Play By The Rules
Nicolas Cage plays Jake Prescott, a young pilot being trained in the use of the state-of-the-art Apache under the watchful eye of Brad Little, and you won’t believe this, Tommy Lee Jones plays the hardened mentor who finds a soft spot for the arrogant new recruit. Don’t worry, Fire Birds is about to take a turn you won’t expect, as Jake’s old girlfriend shows up, and turns out, she’s a pilot too, specializing in the Kiowa scout helicopter.
Her name’s Billie, which is legally distinct from Kelly McGillis’ Top Gun character, named Charlie, so I don’t think they have anything in common.
A Box Office Bomb
Needless to say, Fire Birds wasn’t subtle about its inspiration, but to be honest, I love Top Gun, I love Iron Eagle, and there’s something about the “rah-rah” of a great military action movie that I still love today. Audiences in 1990, however, didn’t have the same love for the gleeful, campy nature of the film, which opened in theaters on the same day as Back to the Future Part III, but even without such strong competition, it was doomed to fail.
By-The-Book And Unoriginal Doesn’t Mean Bad
Critics have derided the movie for decades, but none summed it up as eloquently as the legendary Roger Ebert, who said, “It was tempting to say that I might have liked this movie more if I’d never seen Top Gun; but the fact is, if Top Gun had never been made, Fire Birds would still have seemed like a completely ordinary movie.”
While I agree with almost every critic that has ever reviewed Fire Birds, there’s nothing wrong with a by-the-book action film that, yes, is essentially a commercial for the United States Army. There’s nothing wrong with appreciating Full Metal Jacket or Saving Private Ryan alongside, say, Battleship or Stealth. That doesn’t mean Nicolas Cage flying an Apache makes for a great movie; it doesn’t, but it’s fun.
Sadly Not Streaming Anywhere
REVIEW SCORE
Fire Birds should not be anyone’s favorite movie, as everyone’s acting is turned up to 11. There’s nothing here that hasn’t been done better elsewhere, and yet, there’s something about it. It could be a runtime of under 90 minutes or the gratuitous shots of military machines set against the rising sun, but if you stumbled across this airing on cable with nothing planned for the afternoon, it’s a fantastic watch, at least once.
Sadly, as Fire Birds isn’t available for standard streaming anywhere, that might be the easiest way to watch it. Otherwise, you could check out Nicolas Cage’s Top Gun in a helicopter film through Video on Demand via Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV, or Google Play.
