Highly Overrated But Still Good

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Firehawk is a cheap movie with a weak plot and poor special effects. But it was nice to see Tucker Smallwood in a guest role, which I know from "Space 2063".There are quite a lot of errors in the story. An airliner, that loses height so slowly and falls into the ocean in slow-motion. Aurora 2 flying fast as hell but still being over the airbase after accelerating to mach 3. They had no time to spare and needed to reach their target as soon as possible, so they didn't mind flying around the airbase for a few minutes. The movements of Aurora 2 are unrealistic. It flies around like it doesn't care about gravity and such trivial things.The villain's henchmen are quite dumb. They leave prisoners on the floor (in front of their feet!) without having them bound and they are fooled by such obvious sayings like "Ah, my arm! I've been hit. You can come and finish me out, now." Sure thing... They are also easily distracted.Firehawk is rather bad. I've seen worse movies, but this fact doesn't make it any better.

In the vein of other Cirio H. Santiago movies such as Final Mission (1984) and Eye Of The Eagle 3 (1989), here we have another Vietnam escapade in the jungle.Martin Kove of Shootfighter (1992) fame stars as Stewart, a rescue 'copter pilot with an attitude who chomps down on his cigar. He may have a rough n' tumble demeanor but he seems to know the score. His crew is comprised of Tex (Salinger), who loves nothing more than to shoot VC with his machine gun. At odds with him is the moral medic Davis (Carson). Li is a former VC working with them. There's also Hobbs and Bates. Another member of the team, Jimmy, who closely resembles comedian Nick Dipaolo, is injured. While he is recuperating at the army hospital, he gets closer and closer to the truth about "Firehawk".When their Heli is grounded in the middle of the jungle, The team must overcome their internal squabbling whilst fighting the enemy. Is there a traitor in their midst? And what is the secret of the term "Firehawk"? Kove gets to do his best Hannibal impression while he leads his own "A-Team". This includes "helicopter flying faces". Just imagine "guitar face" but with a Heli instead. The poor audio mixed with the constant helicopter sounds, mixed with constant shooting, mixed with the fact that Kove always has a cigar in his mouth, means much of his dialogue is unintelligible. One disappointing aspect of the movie is that Kove's name isn't "Firehawk".During one of their many gun battles, purple smoke starts billowing from the ground and someone says "it is a purple smoke trap!" Later, Carson gets to bellow fan favorite yell: "Nooooo!" This 'Nam shoot-em-up reminds the viewer of classic NES shooters such as "Operation Wolf" and "Cabal"."Firehawk" is a decent addition to the 'Nam movie boom of the late eighties and early nineties. It has more character development than most of its ilk. Yes, an endless amount of baddies get shot but an attempt is made at intelligence and plot twists.Find out the secret of "Firehawk" tonight! For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

Although the filming of this picture looks low budget, the story and characters are great. I really enjoyed trying to guess who the traitor in the group was. I rate this one in my top ten Corman pictures and believe me I've seen them all.

Of all the countless Vietnam war movies made by cult director Cirio Santiago this is by far the best and most intelligent.It's basically "The Cube" in the jungle:Five very different people are put in an unexpected life threatening situation they need to master together without any help from outside. The similarities to the characters in "The Cube" are stunning: The authority figure who takes responsibility and suddenly turns bad, the medic and "peace protester", the outsider,... and as a replacement for the maze of cubes there's a dense jungle filled with booby traps and deadly enemies.If you liked "The Cube" you'll love this extremely well though out and executed low budget movie.