IRON EAGLE

title: IRON EAGLE

year: 1986

cast: Jason Gedrick, Louis Gossett Jr., Jerry Levine, Larry B. Scott, Robbie Rist, Tim Thomerson

rating: *

Begins as an enjoyably bad film, the likes you'll on cable on a weekend afternoon, centering on a teenager, Jason Gedrick, whose military dad is captured in a third world country. He and his misfit buddies aim to pull off what the military won't: a rescue. Unfortunately, Gedrick's friendship with maverick flyer Louis Gossett Jr. takes over, and the other kids, including Robbie Rist, Jerry Levine, and Larry B. Scott, are replaced by tedious bouts of Gossett's rambling dialog to his young protegee, thus leading to the mission/dog fight that never quite establishes who's being battled up there.