The skeptics called it hokey and cheesy. The nay-sayers said it could never happen. Start stockpiling your oils now, we will run out of oils before the end of Trump's term. This movie is a blueprint, nay ... a PROPHECY of our immediate future. Watch it now before we run out of oils and you'll be too busy surviving and you won't have time to eat popcorns and watch movie. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Also, be warned that the 6 Million Dollar Man and the kid that needed a Bodyguard and that old gruffy man are in this. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!p.s. Red Barchetta is a cool song by that Canadian band Rush. COINCIDENCE? i think not ...

This juvenile, bland flick is strictly for teenagers in old mens' bodies, desperate to relive their hormonally challenged teenage years. How ? By burning up gas and equating a fast, reckless car (or plane) with freedom.The plot borrows heavily from Mister Rogers' neighborhood (if it were run my an oil conglomerate) and Logan's Run (if it were heavily sedated and lacked a clear sense of style).Starring Lee Majors and Burgess Meredith this film is set in a post-gas-crisis world in which an all-powerful government doesn't want you to (*ahem*) drive your car and burn gas. Sort of the opposite of today's Enron-and-Bush, oil-grabbing, SUV-pushing government.This juxtaposition alone makes the film laughable. But wait...there's more. Although the film is set in the future, we're not shown any signs of future technology, beyond a return to bicycles, golf carts and horses. You will believe that the future looks... exactly like today. Same clothing, same suburban houses, same green lawns as today and when the film was made. There are no solar panels, no windmills, no concessions to alternate energy.The acting is flat and flavorless. Even scenes which could have been gritty or moving, buddy-flick, honor, romance, horror... all fall flatter than a paper doll under a briefcase.Continuity is lacking-- the jet flown by Burgess Meredith's character changes colors and configuration from moment to moment as the filmmakers insult our intelligence with unmatched stock footage again and again.The plot is as moronic and only half as exciting as a Dukes of Hazzard episode.Even die-hard car-film and SF fans should avoid this film like month-old roadkill, unless you enjoy heckling Exxon executives trying to make a movie as empty as the hero's gas tank.

Stupid, mindless drivel about a jet assembled within hours by mechanics who have never worked on airplanes (piloted by Burgess Meredith) chasing a Porsche race car which runs on decades-old gasoline sludge, driven by Lee Majors, with Chris Makepeace as the runaway techno-wiz who can McGyver spare parts into a radio receiver which can pick up all frequencies simultaneously, and who somehow learned how to acquire and use chemicals to make high explosives in a perfectly peaceful society. As moronic as it sounds. Terrible waste of Burgess Meredith, but Chris Makepeace may at least be forgiven on the grounds that this was only his second film.

First of all, it has a great score by Gil Melle. He did cool synthesizer stuff with stuff like The Questor Tapes and Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and he doesn't disapppoint here. Even at the dullest moments, you can count on the score to give you a jolt or two.The main problem is that everything in this movie is just...slightly off-key. Give it a better actor than Lee Majors as the "hero," and a better old fogey/jetfighter than hammy Burgess Meredith, and do a little more than just rehash Farenheit 451 with gas instead of books, and this might have worked. Chris Makepeace is okay (although the juvie bad boy/computer hacker stereotype was already overdone by '81), and the plane vs. car action sequences aren't too badly done.*shrug* I liked it. It wasn't better than Cats, but otherwise it works for me.