Firefox: To Russia with Clint
Ten days in New Hampshire reveals that some politicians still obsess over the technological advancements of our adversaries.
Nikki Haley, the last surviving Republican challenger to Donald Trump for the presidential nomination, spent much of the last two weeks slogging around from town to town in New Hampshire warning the local denizens about how China was prepping for war and how the United States was falling asleep at the switch. I was with her most of the time as part of my day job covering politics for Reuters.
It was, to put it mildly, quite a scene to behold: Haley taking the mic in front of 100 or 200 people in small-town country clubs and school gyms and veterans’ halls and quickly making a case that the world was hurtling toward a series of flash points that could trigger one, two or three wars in Asia, Europe, the Middle East. “The world is on fire,” Haley liked to say, as if she was doing the voice over for a summer blockbuster. Sometimes it all felt a bit much for a January afternoon in Peterborough.1
Haley placed much of her emphasis on how China was outpacing the United States in terms of military technology: new ships, advances in AI, cyberweapons, and, she warned, the Chinese were developing “neurostrike” devices that could scramble the brains of enemy military commanders in the field. What the what? Nobody in the crowd seemed to know much to do with all of that, but it was a real throwback to the Cold War era when the U.S. got the jitters every time the Soviets seemed to get a technological leg up.2
Apparently, Haley thinks she has some sort of mind-altering weapon too, as she tried to persuade the media that she won the primary even though she finished 11 points behind Trump.
Firefox, a 1982 techno-thriller directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, would have been right in Nikki Haley’s wheelhouse. The plot involves a plan by the U.S. to steal an advanced Soviet jet (“Firefox” natch), the MiG-31, which has stealth tech that renders it almost invisible to radar and a weapons system that operates by a neural interface.
Clint, a retired Air Force pilot, is recalled for the mission despite having left the service years ago and suffering from PTSD as a result of witnessing innocents die in Vietnam. One of my all-time favorite movie tropes is the hero who lives in the wilderness (in this case, it’s Alaska), bearded and brooding, who is reluctantly dragged back into the fold.3 Everyone at the Pentagon agrees that Clint’s character, Mitchell Gant, is “the best” even though he hasn’t flown in years and sometimes cries in the shower.
But that his character isn’t perfect actually sort of to Eastwood’s credit. At this point in his career, after becoming the biggest box-office draw in the country in the 1970s, Eastwood decided to be almost entirely in charge of his own career, whether choosing his own vehicles to direct and star in or picking other projects he cared about.
At this point in the early 80s, he was already in the midst of deconstructing his image as a laconic, unflappable action star, whether it was starring in silly comedies such as Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and Bronco Billy (1980), a country music-soaked drama like Honkytonk Man (1982) or as a troubled cop with some kinky tastes in Tightrope (1984). He was taking chances. (He was starring in 1-2 movies a year like they were coming off a Michigan assembly line.)
In Firefox, Eastwood tries to make his hero, Gant, more vulnerable than most in the action genre, but his efforts are undone by a script that plods from A to B to C without a lot of wit or inspiration and sequences that are, well, preposterous. There’s a lot of uninspired spycraft with Gant sneaking around Moscow before we in the audience get where we want to be, with Clint in the g-damn plane.4
Firefox is also absolutely a Reagan-era film. There’s no ambiguity about who the bad guys are. As I’ve noted before on this site, films in which the Soviets are direct antagonists are rarer than you would think. In this movie, they are portrayed like, well, Nazis. Clint must be asked for his “papers” 10 times. Are they in order? Are they? It turns out, they are. Whew. And so he infiltrates deep into Russia as a lot of uniformed Soviet officers sit around a command room and say things like, “I believe this pilot is better than we thought.”
These officers are so slow on the uptake, in fact, that it’s a miracle the Cold War didn’t end right there. Clint Eastwood is strolling around your secret base, you guys. You’ve seen all his movies! (When Gant speaks Russian, it sounds exactly like Clint Eastwood speaking in Russian, if you know what I mean. It’s hilarious.)
Modern audiences likely will find the special effects in the jet sequences not up to snuff, but it was good enough when I saw it back in the multiplex. While it was unusual for Eastwood to star in such an effects-heavy film, this was 1982. The imprint of the era is all over Firefox, from Space Invaders to Star Wars and the ending is such a ripoff of the latter as to defy belief. 5It even features a sweeping orchestral score that seems out of place for a Cold War thriller.
I was a little embarrassed for Eastwood in fact. He’s better when his feet are a little more on the ground and he isn’t playing second fiddle to some mediocre effects. Firefox isn’t one of Eastwood’s standouts in a legendary career that has seen plenty of them. Even so, the film more than doubled its budget at the box office, raking in $47 million. Talk about a mind-altering weapon.
WHERE CAN I FIND IT: Rentable on Vudu and Amazon Prime.
HEY ISN’T THAT: One of the Soviet dissident scientists who helps Eastwood in Russia is played by Ronald Lacey. You would know him as the actor who played Nazi agent Toht (complete with the burned hand) in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the purveyor of the greatest cinematic joke of all time.
DUST CLOUDS: Firefox was made shortly after the U.S. Defense Department in 1980 announced the development of “stealth” technology that would reduce the radar profile of an aircraft. It was an election year, and President Jimmy Carter was accused of revealing top-secret info for political gain. The first stealth fighter, the F-117 Nighthawk, would not see combat until 1989.
ARMAGEDDON INDEX: 3/10. The Soviets didn’t really show up for this one, leaving Clint and company wide open to steal their plane. Presumably, the KGB buried the whole affair. It was like when the Browns played the Texans in this year’s playoffs.
WHAT ELSE I AM WATCHING: TV: Fargo (S5, Hulu), For All Mankind (S4, Apple), Reacher (S2, Amazon), The Sopranos (S5, Max). Film: Freebie and the Bean (Rush, 1974), Major Dundee (Peckinpah, 1965)
PERSONAL NOTE: This edition of Nuclear Theater is a late one. My trip to New Hampshire ended up taking almost all of my personal time. My hope is to get back on a regular schedule next week. Thanks for your patience.
HAVE A COMMENT OR SUGGESTION? email: nucleartheater@gmail.com
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Haley’s menacing rhetoric contrasted with Trump telling voters he would keep the U.S. out of further wars. I’m not here to defend Donald Trump, but on a basic level, voters tend to maybe like the candidate who says he or she doesn’t want to go to war. 21st Century America is pretty exhausted by crises at this point. Trump is a child of the Cold War and it shows sometimes, particularly when he talks about nukes.
As discussed in the entry for North by Northwest, the launch of Sputnik in 1957 freaked Americans the eff out.
MacGruber (2010) hilariously ruined this for good.
The plane was modeled after Lockheed’s SR-71 Blackbird, which was, as Pauline Kael used to say, pretty badass.
Of course, “Star Wars” would take on an entirely different context later in the Reagan-era. I’m sure Nuclear Theater will get to that soon enough.