[Movie 274 / Day 290]
Set in 1938, this adaptation of an old pulp-comic sees Cliff Secord (Bill Campbell) as a young pilot getting ready to enter a national air show. He and his mechanic/best friend Peevy (Alan Arkin) have just finished readying their new plane and it’s time to test it. Unfortunately, while he’s flying around giving the plane a shake-down, the FBI chase some gangsters into their hanger, where the gangsters stash the prototype rocket pack they’ve stolen. As they try to make good their escape, they manage to shoot Cliff’s plane and as he tries to safely land it, they swerve onto the runway and hit the plane, causing it to crash and causing the car to crash into a fuel tanker which promptly explodes.
As Cliff and Peevy mourn the loss of their plane and discuss how they’re going to make enough money to pay the airfield owner for the loss of the fuel tanker, Cliff discovers the rocket pack. After a few tests, they ascertain that it is possible for a man to fly using the pack. When their friend gets in trouble flying an old plane at an air show, Cliff straps the rocket pack on and uses it save him. The press go crazy over it and dub him the Rocketeer.
Unfortunately, when the gangsters, led by Eddie Valentine (Paul Sorvino) report back to the man that hired them, actor Neville Sinclair (Timothy Dalton), he makes it clear that he still wants the rocket pack and isn’t too happy that he hasn’t got it. So begins a cat-and-mouse chase between Cliff and Peevy, the FBI, and Sinclair and his goons.
To cut a long story short, it turns out that Neville is a Nazi who is trying to steal the rocket pack so the Germans can attack the world with squadrons of flying storm troopers. In order to recover the pack, he kidnaps Cliff’s girl, Jenny Blake (Jennifer Connelly) with the aid of the gangsters. When Cliff meets them in order to exchange the pack for Jenny, he tells Eddie Valentine that Sinclair is a Nazi and, being a good American gangster, Valentine switches sides and has a fire fight with some German soldiers that were hiding in the bushes. The final fight between Cliff and Neville takes place in (and on) a zeppelin and, of course, the all-American hero prevails.
THE ROCKETEER is good, clean fun. All of the main characters are played with relish, especially Timothy Dalton who, as the Errol Flynn-esque Neville Sinclair, turns in a performance that is bordering on being over the top but is balanced by the grounded boy-next-door of Cliff Secord. The movie also exudes an Art Deco style that looks fantastic – especially the Nazi propaganda animation towards the end, which was beautifully done and wonderfully dark.
So, while THE ROCKETEER is a kids movie, it is some distance away from being a typical Disney flick and manages to be fun and engaging for adults too; only falling flat in a few places. Well worth watching if you catch it on TV.
Rating: 
[ IMDB rating: 6.1 / 10 | IMDB link | Running time: 108 mins ]