One of the minor side effects of the Soviet Union's continued bad behavior in public is that, despite the moral chaos introduced into spy fiction by John le Carré and others, it is still possible to paint Cold War tensions in terms of straightforward melodrama. It perhaps requires someone as Right-leaning as Clint Eastwood, who directed this movie as well as stars in it, to want to undertake such an enterprise, or to do full justice to it. And yet the particular facet of Soviet badness centered on here -- the systematic mistreatment of Jews -- ought to endear Eastwood even to persons, or especially to persons, very much on his Left. The spy mission itself, vital to Balance-of-Power preservation, calls for an American flying ace to steal a Russian MIG that can fly at six times the speed of sound, and can thus "turn invisible" on radar screens. It has a clear-cut, two-part structure, a dark half in which the psychologically shaky pilot sneaks behind the Iron Curtain, and a brighter (but less interesting) half (or almost half) in which he takes flight in the hijacked plane. (1982) — Duncan Shepherd
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