#15: Fire Birds/Wing Of The Apache (1990)

Hello! My name is Ed and I am trying to win the lottery by watching Nicolas Cage films.

This time: we reach the 1990s, with the first and possibly only film ever made about how a director wants to kiss a helicopter: Fire Birds!

You know when you’re watching film Top Gun, and Tom Cruise is all flying his plane and that — do you ever think “I wish this film was about helicopters instead. And also had a tenuous connection to the War on Drugs?”

Well luckily this piece of shit exists!

Here is pretty much the entire plot of Fire Birds: Nicolas Cage has to learn to fly a helicopter using only one of his eyes so he can go and shoot at bad drug helicopters. This is padded out to film length with just loads and loads of footage of helicopters because aren’t helicopters just the greatest? Don’t you wish you could be a helicopter? Or maybe even kiss a helicopter?

Someone wrote a script for an action movie and had the actual thought, “Yeah let’s have the main driver of this thing be a helicopter pilot trying to overcome his ‘left eye dominance’. And have a scene where he overcomes this by driving around in a car with a pair of woman’s pants and a periscope duct taped to his head.”

Meanwhile, he’s also trying to woo Sean Young with the unusual tactic of being a massively sexist arsehole (he doesn’t think women should kiss the helicopters), while their commander, Tommy Lee Jones, has a midlife crisis (they won’t let him kiss the helicopters anymore). But these sub-plots just sort of peter out in the finale as a newly right eye dominated Cage is now able to shoot the drug helicopters out of the sky. God Bless America.

Then a Phil Collins song plays. It isn’t even a Phil Collins song about helicopters. Oh yeah, director David Green’s previous movie was fucking Buster, another load of old crap starring Phil Collins as cheeky Great Train Robber Buster Edwards.

The film even managed to have 2 different, but both awful, titles — originally known as Wings of Apache, for the US release (but not the international one) it was given the even more terrible title of Fire Birds (I guess because helicopters fly and… sometimes go on fire?).

Sadly, given how rubbish the rest of the film is, Cage is in a relatively subdued mode — though he does briefly come to life inside the flight simulator, where while shooting at virtual bad guys, he repeatedly shouts “I AM THE GREATEST!” before embarking on a bizarre monologue:

“Shoot ‘em! Blast ‘em! Nab ‘em! Grab ‘em! Shake ‘em! Bake ‘em! Cook ‘em! Clean ‘em! Hose ‘em! Boil ‘em! Kick ‘em! Nab ‘em! Twist ‘em! Fry ‘em! ALL GONE! BYE! BYE!”

Later on, there is a bit where he is so annoyed that Sean Young won’t do kissing with him that he does gives a roundhouse kick to the air, which is also quite funny. But none of this is enough to save the film.

“We’re gonna do another Top Gun right — we’ve even got the guy who designed all the stunts with the planes — except this time it’s about helicopters and the script is written in crayon. Also we’ve got the bloke who directed fucking Buster locked in because he’s really into long sexy shots of helicopters. Also Sean Young’s arse in one scene, but mainly the helicopters.”

So yeah, don’t watch Fire Birds unless you too want to kiss the helicopters.

THE NUMBERS

3 — Apparently Nicolas Cage’s new helicopter will keep him “as busy as a 3-peckered goat”. I don’t know what this means but it is probably revolting.

5 — The film opens with the text of a speech George Bush (the first one) gave about bad drugs on 5 September 1989. Thanks to George Bush and the helicopters there are now no more bad drugs. Mission accomplished.

12 — A bogey is at 12 o’clock, which means a bad drugs helicopter is near Nicolas Cage’s mate’s helicopter. It then blows his mate up.

20 — Apparently Apache helicopters are so good and strong that you could survive a crash at 20Gs.

21 — The fictional helicopters in this film are played by the real helicopters of the 21st Cavalry Brigade.

40 — Tommy Lee Jones turns 40 so they throw him a surprise birthday party where he has to wear a crown with “40” written on it. They give him a helicopter cake so finally he can have a helicopter inside of him.

THE RESULT

1 number. AGAIN. God damn it how long is it going to take me to win the stupid lottery? As an unemployed man, watching Nicolas Cage films and playing the lottery is my only source of income now!

HELICOPTERS ARE RUBBISH AND I HOPE THEY ALL FLY INTO THE BIN.

NEXT TIME ON NICOLAS CAGE:

Industrial Symphony No. 1. Which is apparently some sort of PLAY. La-di-dah!