How sad is this?

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

U.S. Air Force pilot Col. Ted Masters is shot down by enemy MiGs from the Arab state of Bilya over the Mediterranean. He is captured and sentenced to hang. Meanwhile, his restless son Doug Masters (Jason Gedrick) is rejected by the Air Force Academy. With the government unwilling to mount a rescue, Doug plans his own rescue mission with his young friends from the Eagles Flying Club. He convinces Vietnam vet Col. Charles 'Chappy' Sinclair (Louis Gossett Jr.) to train him and join him on the mission.I probably saw this after 'Top Gun'. Despite coming out a few months earlier, I doubt that many people saw this in the theaters. It was always a step down but seeing it now, the silly unrealistic story cannot be ignored. The action is inferior to 'Top Gun' but it's still functional. There are nice planes flying around. The miniature models being used are obvious. The explosions are static. This was good fun back in the day but it is not more than 80's cheese today.

Air Force brat Doug Masters (Jason Gedrick) finds out that his father has been shot down and captured by a brutal Middle Eastern regime and embarks on a crazy plan to rescue him, which involves stealing multi-million dollar jet fighters.I loved this movie as a kid and I still do. That said, from a technical standpoint (which is where my ratings come from) it's just not good.The writing stretches verisimilitude to its limit, the acting is just barely at par and the flow is, to be polite, non-existent. This movie has too much filler. It could be cut down to 45 minutes so it could air in a one hour time slot on television and the essential elements would remain intact.There are some good elements in the movie. There's some good action and chase sequences and the last 20 minutes were fantastic and make this movie worth watching. The overall cinematography and effects were done well, though not outstandingly so.In all, it's a fun movie to watch if you like jet and/or military movies.

...But it definitely still only deserves 4/10 stars and no more. A moronic dumb kid's father is a fighter pilot who gets shot down by some Arab country. They never name the country in the movie, its really ridiculous, they just vaguely refer to some Arab nation, this movie is really ignorant like that. But Lamar from Revenge of the Nerds is in here, he is friends with the main character Doug Masters. Well, Doug Masters, who lives on an Air Force base, his father is an air force pilot, yet he fails to get into the air force academy, conceives of a plot (with help from his retarded friends) to steal two jets and go rescue his father. Yea, exactly - this is One of the Greatest Films Ever Made!!! Louis Gossett Jr is fantastic in his role. You can tell he basically wanted to smack the hell out of Doug Masters the whole movie. Well anyway, you can probably guess how the plot ends, I can't believe they made 3 sequels to this movie.

I have rarely laughed so hard at a movie. Notice that I laughed AT Iron Eagle, not WITH it, because this is probably the stupidest film I have ever seen (with the obvious exception of sci-fi monstrosity CyberTracker). You should also remember that this film is not a comedy!Even overlooking the preposterous plot (the idea that a 16-year-old could walk into a US Air Force base, steal an F-16, fly to the Middle East and kill about a thousand people without anyone noticing is beyond belief), the film is full of ridiculous action scenes that make little or no sense. For example, at various points, Doug Masters uses a machine-gun on his plane to shoot a steel girder, a control tower, and a tent. All of these things explode in a massive fireball. Why? The enemy aircraft also explode in a strange way reminiscent of a paper aeroplane being blown up with a firework.On the plus side, I did actually enjoy this film. Admittedly not in the way the makers probably wanted it to be enjoyed, but all the same I laughed at it and later bought the DVD. It's also improved by the awesome presence of David Suchet as the evil terrorist leader (maybe you'll recall him as mustachioed Belgian detective Poirot?) Overall, then, the film is a laugh and a light-hearted alternative to more serious fighter-plane movies like Top Gun. Even if it is just as subtly homo-erotic (check out the man-hug between Doug and Chappy. Something's going on between 'em!)