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Author
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Topic: Blue Thunder
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Tom Photiou
Film God
Posts: 4837
From: Plymouth U.K
Registered: Dec 2003
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posted September 09, 2017 05:15 AM
I know this isn't a review section but im doing this anyway as this film was one my Mum took me to see on a pre release showing here in Plymouth in 1982/3, so there ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
What we have here is a great 80s action movie starring Roy Sheider and Warren Oats.
Purchased from Dave Guest this print has superb colour and pin sharp definition. These images do not do it any justice here. No splices and only a few minor lines here and there this film doesn't stop and the helicopter sequences look great on the big home screen. Such a pity it isn't scope but with the 25mm lens i bought back along it fills the screen from the short distance and you certainly feel like your there as the copter fly's around the sky scrappers and under bridges . This is an excellent low fade print and has perfect contrast which is ideal for this as a lot of reel one is at night so any fade would certainly ruin this film. Hopefully it will outlast me. Cheers again David.
Here is the plot, BTW, Sadly Warren Oats died just before it's release so the film is dedicated to him. As a point of interest, it was written by Dan o Bannon of Dark Star and Alien, (uncredited) fame.
In 1983, Frank Murphy (Roy Scheider) is an LAPD helicopter-pilot-officer and troubled Vietnam War veteran with post traumatic stress disorder. His newly assigned field partner is Richard Lymangood (Daniel Stern). The two patrol Los Angeles at night and give assistance to police forces on the ground.
Murphy is instructed to attend a sunrise demonstration in the Mojave Desert at "Pinkville" and is selected to pilot the world's most advanced helicopter, originally conceived in name as The Special, and hung with the nickname, "Blue Thunder", it is one of two prototypes of a military-style combat aircraft intended for police use in surveillance and against possible large-scale civic disobedience during the 1984 Olympic venue. With powerful armament, and other accoutrements such as infrared scanners, powerful microphones and cameras, built-in mobile telephone, computer and modem, and a U-Matic VCR, Blue Thunder appears to be a formidable tool in the war on crime. Murphy notes wryly that with enough of these helicopters "you could run the whole damn country."
When the death of city councilwoman Diane McNeely turns out to be more than just a random murder, Murphy begins his own covert investigation. He discovers that a subversive action group is intending instead to use Blue Thunder in a military role to quell disorder under the project codename T.H.O.R. ("Tactical Helicopter Offensive Response"), and is secretly eliminating political opponents to advance its agenda.
Murphy suspects the involvement of his old wartime nemesis, former United States Army Colonel F.E. Cochrane (Malcolm McDowell), the primary test pilot for Blue Thunder and someone who felt Murphy was "unsuitable" for the program. Murphy and Lymangood use Blue Thunder to record a meeting between Cochrane and the other government officials which would implicate them in the conspiracy, but Cochrane looks out the window and sees Blue Thunder and realises what has happened. After landing, Lymangood secures the tape and hides it, but is captured upon returning to his home, interrogated, and killed while trying to escape. Murphy steals Blue Thunder and arranges to have his girlfriend Kate (Candy Clark) retrieve the tape and deliver it to the local news station, using the helicopter to thwart her pursuers. Kate arrives at the news station, but is almost captured by one of the conspirators; the reporter Kate was sent to find intercepts Kate and gets the tape back, while the conspirator is knocked unconscious by a security guard.
Two Air National Guard F-16 fighters are deployed to deal with Murphy, but he manages to shoot one down and evade the other. However, in the process, one missile destroys a barbeque stand in Little Tokyo and a second impacts a building in Downtown Los Angeles, (pre CGI special effects which look A1), The operation is then suspended by the mayor. Cochrane, disobeying orders to stand down, confronts Blue Thunder in a heavily armed Hughes 500 helicopter, and after a tense battle, Murphy is able to shoot him down after executing a 360° loop through use of Blue Thunder's turbine boost function. Murphy then destroys Blue Thunder by landing it in front of an approaching freight train.
In the meantime the tape is made public and as a result the conspirators are arrested.
Not too sure if there is something wrong on the site as it wont let me load any more images even though there are only 7 here.
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