Who is this movie for? If your favorite war films are along the lines of "Platoon", "Fury", "Hamburger Hill", "The Beast of War", and "Battle of Britain" this movie combines some of the best elements from all of these to produce a well-made movie about Navy carrier A-6 pilots in the final years of American involvement in the Vietnam war. Set in 1972, shortly after President Nixon ordered "Operation Linebacker" against North Vietnam (an American bombing campaign intended to convince the communist leaders to return to the peace table), "Intruder" shows the lives of Navy pilots who fly the, by then usually pointless, bombing raids against North Vietnam. We meet the real star of the movie from the very beginning: the aircraft they fly is the Grumman A-6 intruder bomber - a slow speed but very advanced aircraft crammed full of the latest American electronic technology, getting a real workout in the deadly skies over North Vietnam. I won't reveal too many plot details here since the real show is watching the pilots do their stuff - apparently bombing North Vietnam was the most heavily defended area in the world and bristled with guns of every caliber and hundreds of SAM sites - and was extremely dangerous for American pilots. But by this time in the war, .the US had developed an anti-radar missile, the AGM-45 Shrike; that fired a 150 lb warhead with the ability to home in on the radar beam from a Vietnamese Sam site and destroy it. Watching the Intruder pilots narrowly avoiding anti-aircraft and SAM missiles is exciting stuff and to me the best parts of the movie. A great military movie that's in the same general category as "Top Gun" but with a much tighter story and better action sequences. If you're a military/war movie buff, don't miss this film.

Two pilots aboard an US aircraft carrier during the Vietnam war take the war into their own hands when they commandeer an A6 bomber, known as the "Intruder" and head over protective airspace to bomb Hanoi. Something promising couldn't eventuated, but I found "Flight of the Intruder" to be rather mundane despite being well-made and capturing the atmosphere aboard the carrier. Story arches are there, but they feel quite moody, superficial (like the rushed romance angle with Rosanne Arquette's character) and cliché. Its slow-build up is planned in a calculative manner, but when it came to the action scenes, it just didn't ignite much in the way of thrills despite some stellar visuals and aerial photography. Although it's more than just a basic action joint, as comradeship between the pilots is probably its strong point along with its anti-war sentiment putting this war into perspective with some strong script writing. Especially when Johnson's rogue character becomes frustrated by questioning his orders and the stirring speech about knowing the difference of dieing for something than dieing for nothing. Brad Johnson and William Dafoe (quite a laid-back, charismatic performance) lead the way as the two pilots then in support is credible turns from Danny Glover (barking out the orders), Tom Sizemore, J. Kenneth Campbell and Ving Rhames.

I found the movie interesting. It is probably loosely based on the exploits of Lyle Bull and Charles Hunter who on 30 October 1967 flew a solo flight over Hanoi and received the Navy Cross. Here is part of the citation for Bull: Lieutenant Bull assisted in the planning and execution of an extremely dangerous, single-plane, night, radar bombing attack on the strategically located and heavily defended Hanoi railroad ferry slip in North Vietnam. Although the entire Hanoi defensive effort was concentrated upon his lone bomber, he flawlessly assisted his pilot in navigating the aircraft to the target area and commencing an attack. Seconds before bomb release, six enemy surface-to-air missiles were observed to be tracking on his plane. Undaunted by this threat to his personal safety, Lieutenant Bull assisted his pilot in taking swift and effective action to avoid the missiles and complete the attack, releasing all weapons in the target area with extreme accuracy. After release, four more missiles were fired at his aircraft in addition to the intense anti-aircraft-artillery fire.

I don't know why this film gets such rave reviews. I went into it with no expectations other than to enjoy it. I wasn't expecting Top Gun, and fortunately I didn't get that. I didn't get much enjoyment, either.Actually, I did have some expectations, because it has Willem Dafoe and Rosanna Arquette in the cast, so how could it be bad? It could be bad because of over-the-top direction and screenplay, that's how. This is easily the worst performance by Dafoe I've ever seen. So he must have been acting according to directions. Arquette was just wasted. She should have said "no".So, imho, this film was ruined by being eye-rollingly corny, which appears to be what a lot of people want, and they identify it as "realism". To me, realism is the sort of thing we got in "Behind Enemy Lines", which is a textbook example of how to make a film of this genre. See Top Gun again instead. It's shallow, but at least it's entertaining.