hepcj ** spoiler alert **This is a truly terrible film. It is the worst kind of saccharine, positive can-do, self-congratulatory, USA, USA improbable nonsense. The basic story is that a kid's father, who is a fighter pilot in the US air force, gets trapped in some generic Middle- Eastern country. His son and few other munch kins join forces with another colonel to steal two F-16 jets to save him. The adults are all trusting imbeciles, the Arab villains are stereotyped caricatures while the child actors are annoying, precocious dorks. I said spoiler alert at the beginning but really, you know that there is only one way this is going to end up. Explosions, villains running around like the Keystone Kops trying to stop them with rockets made from toilet roll tubes, Father's saved = 1 all with no American casualties. Every target is made of planks of balsa wood but explodes in a napalm like fireball all to cheesy rock guitar music.You would probably enjoy this film if you were about five-year's old but for everyone else it is a hopeless cause. Time to eject.

TxMike This movie came out the same year we moved to Houston, and my son was 13. I remember watching it with him back then, and again presently, now that my son is a Commercial Pilot. It is a cheesy movie, everything is pretty much totally improbable, if not impossible, but it is a good story of father-son affection.Jason Gedrick is Doug Masters, young Cessna pilot, high schooler, whose dad is a military fighter pilot. Doug aspires to attend the Air Force Academy and become a fighter pilot also, and has made friends with some on the base who allow him ample fighter simulator time.The drama begins when Doug's dad is flying a routine training mission over the Mediterranian and is shot down. Captured by an unnamed Arab country, he is quickly tried and sentenced to be hung in three days.Naturally Doug wants the USA to rescue his dad but is not happy with their response. So along with his friends, and retired fighter pilot Louis Gossett Jr. as Col. Charles 'Chappy' Sinclair, they hatch a plan to fly two armed fighter planes to rescue dad, re-fueling over the Atlantic. All highly improbable, but fun to watch.SPOILERS: Doug was denied admission to the Academy because of an F he got as a result of skipping classes for simulator time. On the unauthorized mission he not only saved dad but shot down a few enemy fighters. Back home all news of the mission was suppressed and his "sentence" for the crime was admission to the Air Force Academy where he would receive supervision and discipline.

charlessmith702210 I really like the movie's opening, when Col. Ted Masters realizes on his fighter radar that four enemy aircraft were approaching from about 10 o'clock. The good news is that the movie does not mention at the very beginning that the colonel, along with a wingman fighter who was a lieutenant, was trying to do a "freedom of navigation" exercise along the eastern Meditteranean Sea, but went a little too past the restricted air space zone reserved for a rogue Middle eastern nation as they accidentially fly past it.I also like all of the intercutting on the colonel's fighter radar readouts and computer displays as the enemy aircraft aggressively picks the two American fighter pilots into an engagement for violating their airspace. That first dogfight immediately reminds me of the famous fighter pilot movie, "Top Gun." From the waxing of the enemy bandits to the enemy aircraft's thirty-milimeter rounds that struck the colonel's jet engines and forcing the plane down, forcing him to eject, all of this reminds us of one thing...dogfight fighter techniques can keep you alive...but one false move can cause you to be shot down.The only problem in the movie was the "snake sequence" scene. It was a little bit too long. Yes, the movie's opening was great when you see the conflict...which was the dogfight engagement. Only when one boy tells Doug Masters that his father was shot down after the Cessna planes landed in the "snake" race, forces us back to the time the conflict already started. I guess the snake sequence in the middle should be interrupted a little bit by Col. Masters being dragged in handcuffs in the middle of the Bilyad desert on his way to the detention center...while the music sequence for the "snake" continues. The film does not do it...if it were, the conflict's details would have been smoother at that point. Still good otherwise.When word found out that Col. Ted Masters trial for high treason (violating territorial air sovereignty) was over and he was condemned to be hung on the gallows in three days, Doug Masters decides to go into action. With the Air Force having futile attempts to save the man, Doug decides to pull his friends and Col. Sinclair (played by Louis Gossett Jr.) for a plan to rescue Masters. Risking a high chance of facing a court martial and spending more than a year in a military stockade, he goes against Air Force policy and makes a plan to rescue Masters without consent of the U.S. government.Doug and his friends sneak into several classified areas of the base to get plenty of stuff on the area where Masters is held for the upcoming hanging, and the surrounding area around Bilyad (which turns out to be a fake Middle Eastern country for the movie). One plan included shooting off firecrackers outside the Air Force darkroom area as a diversion to get classified photos and maintenance stuff on the fighter aircraft, fighter base, intelligence, and all of the other military stuff around Bilyad. When all was said and done, and Sinclair studied all of the intelligence, he almost rebuffed at that plan because Doug was way too cocky. Not until they get the two F-16 planes and tried a dry run across a firing range that I realized what they were going to do overseas. I realized that Doug's fighter shooting and bomb dropping is not good until he hears rock music. I can remember when he dropped one Mach 82 bomb on a horizontal target and the bomb missed by 20 feet....I realized that Doug is unusual. He likes music when he fires the fighter ammunition.The last part of the conflict, the final dogfight action in "Iron Eagle" was better than Top Gun's climax of the hostile dogfight sequences. I liked the way the final conflict unfolded, especially when Doug Masters faces off with an Middle-Eastern ace fighter pilot who actually ran the trial against Ted Masters. Short but sweet when Doug took the enemy fighter out after a second try by a side-winder missile. Looks like this Bilyad colonel was akin to "Darth Vader" in Star Wars....in the air, he can be very evil, because if you have seen Star Wars, Darth Vader was actually Anakin Skywalker, who was an ace pilot in space. Unusual connotation for this but still works!

ReelCheese Ahhh, to be twelve years old again. I'm pretty sure if I was still that age, I would have loved this preposterous medley of bad acting, copious amounts of Queen's "One Vision" and senseless explosions. Sadly (and I do mean that), I've grown up and can recognize IRON EAGLE for what it is... and while it's not god-awful, it's not all that good, either.IRON EAGLE is the story of new high school grad Doug Masters (Jason Gedrick, whom you'd recognize from CROSSING THE BRIDGE and ONE EYED KING had you ever heard of those movies). His fighter pilot dad has been captured by an evil Middle East country for illegally entering its territory (imagine that!). Now papa's gonna be hung and nobody in the US of A is ready to do anything about... 'cept Doug. So our hero steals military intelligence and an F-16 fighter jet (it's quite easy, really... just get your friends to distract army dudes by 'accidentially' spilling juice on their shirts and stuff). With the help of bright spot Louis Gossett Jr., he soars in to save the day.IRON EAGLE actually starts out promising. You might even be willing to forgive its ludicrousness, but it gradually morphs into a meaningless series of fireballs and clichéd dialog. It seems perfectly content to dish out cheap thrills to violence-obsessed boys, and do nothing more. It's also too long and at times borders on the laughable. The film still has a certain charm, but unless your night is slower than molasses, you'll want to skip it.