Blue Thunder

Blue Thunder casts Roy Scheider as Frank Murphy, an airborne police officer who’s assigned to test out a top-secret new helicopter for the military alongside his green partner (Daniel Stern’s Richard Lymangood) – with the two men eventually stumbling upon a deadly conspiracy involving the new (and very deadly) equipment. Filmmaker John Badham, working from Dan O’Bannon and Don Jakoby’s screenplay, delivers a somewhat erratic thriller that improves steadily as it progresses, as the picture suffers from a first half that moves at a distressingly deliberate pace and contains an often stifling amount of chatty exposition. There’s little doubt, then, that Blue Thunder benefits substantially from Badham’s predictably slick visuals and the uniformly stellar performances, with, in terms of the latter, the palpable (and irresistible) chemistry between Scheider and Stern’s respective characters going a long way towards initially cultivating a watchable atmosphere. It’s not until it moves into its action-packed and impressively thrilling second half that Blue Thunder finally becomes the captivating piece of work one might’ve anticipated, as Badham offers up a series of high-octane set pieces, including a simultaneous helicopter and car chase, that ensure the whole thing ends on an exceedingly positive note – which ultimately does cement the movie’s place as a solid entry within Badham’s mostly stellar filmography.

*** out of ****

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