The Rocketeer

Another of the movies that I had a chance to record quite some time ago is The Rocketeer. But it's only recently that I finally got around to watching it to do a post on here.

In the year 1938, Cliff Secord (Bill Campbell) is a daredevil pilot who is testing a plane that he and his mechanic Peevy (Alan Arkin) have been working on, hoping to fly it in a national airplane competition in the not too distant future. However, as he's flying, in the same area there are a couple of gangsters trying to get away from FBI agents. Cliff inadvertently flies over the skirmish, and the gangsters, unsurprisingly thinking the plane might be overhead tracking from the FBI, shoots at the plane, damaging it beyond repair.

Everybody converges at the airport, where the crippled plane lands and crashes into the car, sending it into a gas truck and destroying the car. The FBI agents retrieve the package that they were looking for which the gangsters had taken, and bring it back to its rightful owner.

This being southern California, that rightful owner is Howard Hughes (Terry O'Quinn), who of course was involved in aviation at that time before becoming more involved with Hollywood. But when they open the package, they discover that it's just an old vacuum cleaner, and not what had really been stolen from Hughes. Back at the airport, Cliff and Peevy examine the package they ended up with, and find out that it's some sort of jet-pack, which is of course a completely novel technology to them back in 1938.

Unsurprisingly, everybody wants that package. Peevy tinkers with it, trying to figure out a way to make it work better. Hughes, since his engineers basically invented it, obviously wants it back. And very high-placed bad guys want it, too. Eddie Valentine (Paul Sorvino) is a gangster who has been hired by swashbuckling actor Neville Sinclair (Timothy Dalton) to get this package, although Eddie doesn't learn until much later in the movie that Neville is actually a Nazi sympathizer.

It turns out that there's more than just the rocket pack connecting Neville and Cliff. Cliff's girlfriend Jenny (Jennifer Connelly) is an aspiring actress, and she's actually got a bit part in Neville's latest costume action movie. When Cliff uses the rocket pack to save a stricken pilot at an air show, it makes the news, and through a series of events Neville learns about Jenny's relationship with Cliff, who is being called the "Rocketeer" although nobody knows his identity because using the pack successfully involves wearing a helmet that conceals the user's identity. Neville decides he's going to try to start a relationship with Jenny to see if he can learn from her who the rocketeer is and in that way get the rocket pack.

The Rocketeer, released 30 years ago and set in the late 1930s, is based on a graphic novel, which is part of the reason why the movie has a bit of a comic book feel to it. That, and I got the distinct impression that it was also going for the 1930s serials look as well. In those regards, the movie is quite appealing. The story doesn't have that much realism to it, but I don't think anybody should expect realism from a movie like this. The acting is adequate, but again, I don't think you're watching movies like The Rocketeer for the sort of acting you'd get from a serious drama.

Some of the special effects seemed a bit off, albeit in a way that I don't know that I can really describe. There are also any number of goofs in terms of history. The movie is set in 1938 and has a climax on board a zeppelin, although the Hindenburg disaster occured in 1937 and ended the era of the airship, so there wouldn't have been any airship to fly to Los Angeles for the climax. But again, for a movie like this, you're expected to suspend disbelief, so some more minor anachronisms like this are to be expected.

All in all, I think The Rocketeer will appeal to fans of the old 1930s serials, as well as people looking for a more vintage action movie. The last I checked, it is available on DVD.