FIre Birds

reviewed by Vivian Rose, age 14, from US

"Fire Birds" wasn't a bad movie; it wasn't poorly scripted or clumsily acted. It certainly wasn't boring. It just seemed a little...weak. I guess I mean that there just wasn't that much to it.

Nicholas Cage stars as a navy fighter pilot assigned to help the DEA keep drug smugglers out of the country. He has a rather sexist attitude about his girlfriend - or rather, ex-girlfriend, at least when the movie starts - who is also a pilot. No wonder she doesn't want to date him anymore.

Meanwhile, Tommy Lee Jones plays Cage's superior, a forty-year-old navy officer who is going through something of a midlife crisis. Being a workaholic, he doesn't like the idea that he is expected to instruct students but isn't supposed to fly in actual missions anymore.

By the end of the movie, everything was just too easily resolved. The flight scenes were exciting, the acting was convincing, and the plot was grabbing - but everything unraveled predictably and just a little too smoothly. After a big mission, all the characters seem to have solved all their problems, although it's hard to see how. When Cage and his girlfriend fly off together at the end, you have to wonder how long it'll be until they start fighting again. And Jones seems to be perfectly happy with his life having had the opportunity to fly in another mission (on which he was wounded, no less). I guess I just felt like there should have been more.

My rating: 3 stars

Rating : PG-13

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