Flight of Fury

FLIGHT OF FURY (2007)

Directed by: Michael Keusch
Screenplay: Steven Seagal and Joe Haplin
Starring: Steven Seagal

Straight to video star and former American Ninja, Michael Dudikoff is recruited to go behind enemy lines and retrieve a top secret plane which has been stolen by a group of renegade terrorists. Said plane can make itself invisible and it’s of the up-most priority that it's retrieved before the terrorists use it for some dastardly plan. Hold on, that’s Black Thunder and that movie came out almost ten years ago. This movie is Flight of Fury and stars straight to DVD and former A-list action star, Steven Seagal. Except both movies have exactly the same plot, music and liberal use of stock footage. Yep, Seagal stars in a carbon copy of an old Dudikoff film and you know you are in trouble when one of his latest films is a remake of a straight to video acitoneer from ten years ago, that itself was cobbled together from footage from other movies.



Seagal has been churning out straight to DVD action flicks for some years now. Long gone are the days of action epics like Marked for Death and Out for Justice and while Flight of Fury is by no means his worst (that honour still belongs to Out for a Kill and The Foreigner) it's still far from some of his other entertaining straight to DVD flicks, like Mercenary for Justice and Submerged (both of which I enjoyed and were competently made). Flight of Fury has the potential to be a fun B action pic: top soldier must steal back secret plane, cue lots of action and explosions. Unfortunately, Seagal seems to be trying even less in this picture than some of his previous efforts, which is surprising considering he co-wrote and produced this. Badly doubled and dubbed in a lot of scenes, Seagal sleepwalks through most of the flick playing the most unconvincing Stealth pilot to fly the skies. The saving grace is, he does do most of his own fighting this time and even has a cool fight sequence where he brandishes a mini axe, chopping up the bad guys with aplomb. It’s almost vintage Seagal.



The action does pick up in the last half hour with gunfights, fistfights and explosions galore but the arial combat scenes are just cut and paste footage from other films. I swear the footage has been used in at least the following films: Iron Eagle, D.A.R.R.Y.L, Black Thunder, Stealth Fighter, Active Stealth, Desert Thunder and possibly even Top Gun. It’s jarring watching so much stock footage jammed together which makes the first hour so tedious. It’s a shame as director Michael Keusch films the new footage with some skill and stages some competent action. A pity they opted to use so much stock footage because Flight of Fury, as stated, had the potential to be a fun little action pic.

As it is, Flight of Fury is mildly entertaining, often unintentionally funny and only picks up in the last half hour. Seagal completists will be the sole benefactors from seeing this.