WHIRL WITHOUT END..........THE UP-TO-DATE HORRORS IN "BLUE THUNDER"

Blue Thunder (1983)    I don't think the filmmakers here had anything on their minds other than a rollercoaster thrill-ride........this movie orgasms at the sight of high tech helicopters careening  around L.A. skycrapers and wreaking all manner of antiseptically bloodless destruction......

            But what sticks out 36 years later is the intentions of the film's villains........using their super-duper helicopter to spy on, subdue, control and if necessary decimate rambunctious minority populations........mainly blacks and latinos.

             For the purpose of this movie, that's just a MacGuffin to launch the plot  into motion......and this is, first and foremost, a movie about forward motion, so the script's not about to delve into the details of its malignant conspirators......

              All you need to know about them gets embodied in their primary slimeball, Col. Cochrane (Malcolm McDowell) Cochrane's  a military douche who, in Vietnam flashbacks, enjoyed tossing prisoners out of a copter. This never sat well with the pilot Frank Murphy (Roy Scheider), now a LAPD copter cop who once again finds himself  facing his old nemesis........who's testing that whirlybird war machine "Blue Thunder" for its secret task of intimidating and terrorizing non-whites.

              (By the way, the script so wears out Cochrane's annoying little phrase "Catch you later", you can easily tell it came from the screenwriting manual chapter, "How to make them hate your villain")

               Watching this again, it's the first thing that caught my attention........that.the "Blue Thunder" villains are just another version of Trump and his minions, who've made a career out of demonizing and tormenting the "others"....meaning anyone who doesn't look like them........especially children.

                And now the second strange thing about this film.......its utterly bizarre attitude toward the collateral damage inflicted by its high-tech air power.......

                From the start, it's clearly shown that 'Blue Thunder's touted ability to precisely hit its intended targets is bogus........Cochrane himself, during a test run, accidentally blows away cardboard cutouts meant to symbolize innocent bystanders.......

                  So when Cochrane and Murphy arrive at their airborne mano e mano, rockets and machine gun fire rips through heavily populated streets and high-rises........but just like today's comic book movies, you're supposed to believe everybody got out of the way, just in time.......

                    Sure they did.

                  At one point, Scheider deliberately hovers 'Blue Thunder' in front of a barbecue chicken factory, hoping to trick a heat-seeking missile into hitting the building.....(thereby making the chicken  way more extra crispy than Scheider....).

                    In this task, he succeeds.......leading to a huge blast that generates a rain of cascading chickens down upon eager crowds of hungry homeless people......(another current hot button issue that the film unwittingly deals with ahead of its time....)

                     Elsewhere in this extended battle, the film treats us to the spectacle of missiles ripping through office buildings.........and honestly, I don't know how to view this scene without conjuring up the nightmare memories of planes tearing through the World Trade Center on 9-11.

                    Then again, it's 1983......and the horrors of Trump and terrorists were still decades away......back when a thriller like this had no real political or social agenda........all it wanted to  do was make you go "woooooo-hoooooo"  when it blew shit up.

                     In that regard, 'Blue Thunder' remains a competent 80's artifact.......given a whole new sub-text its makers never dreamed of. Viewed in the current climate of today........it's more than Roy Scheider's copter that loops upside down.....the country's moral compass loops right along with it.
2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)