Stealth - 2005

Columbia TriStar, Sony Pictures

Directed by Rob Cohen

Cast:

• Lt. Ben Gannon – Josh Lucas
• Lt. Kara Wade – Jessica Biel
• Lt. Henry Purcell – Jamie Foxx
• Captain George Cummings – Sam Shepard
• Dr. Keith Orbit – Richard Roxburgh
• Captain Dick Marshfield – Joe Morton
• EDI (voice) – Wentworth Miller

Story: In the not too distant future, the U.S. Navy has developed three super advanced planes and manned them with three of their best pilots. We enter as the three are completing the final phase of their land based training. They complete a complex mission at the O'Fallon test range and are assigned to the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in the Indian Ocean, where they are to link up with their fourth team member, an artificial intelligence plane called EDI (Extreme Deep Invader) with a learning capability. As they are returning from their first mission, EDI is hit by lightning and his artificial neural pathways begin to multiply at an alarming rate, but Captain Cummings is so dedicated to this mission succeeding he orders the place back up without sufficient time to test what has been altered it the AI's intelligence. EDI goes up again, and decides he will carry out attack plans in his memory without authorization, and the three human pilots must attempt to get him back.

Review: While the photography, special effects and acting are all excellent, this film just doesn't give us the resolution we were looking for. The bar scenes, the port visits, and even some of the shots of the main actors at play are there to give us a human identity as opposed to the EDI persona, I guess. But there are unneeded scenes, especially the one of Jessica Biel in a bikini, not that I found Ms. Biel unpleasant to look at, but the scene wasn't needed. The premise of the film has been done before (Frankenstein, Terminator, etc.), and while this film offers some splendid photography and great special effects of the planes and EDI, overall it lacks the authenticity Cohen is capable of. See it once as a rental, and don't forget to return it on time. You need not add this to your collection.