With Your Eyes Shut

Maybe the Fourth of July should also be officially thought of as Roy Scheider Day. The man deserves that sort of tribute. JAWS is of course the main reason for this and what he does as the film’s everyman fighting for his life, his family, his community in addition to fighting against the inherent evils of capitalism as portrayed by both Murray Hamilton and the shark itself he represents what we want America to be about as well as anyone ever has. And I’m sure that some people put on JAWS 2 right after that even though it’s, well, JAWS 2. SORCERER, also a summer release back in ’77, just got a new Criterion 4K which I’m sure people are also watching these days and as far as I’m concerned, BLUE THUNDER, which I first wrote about way back in 2008, also belongs on that list for the day but I’ll admit that this is purely for personal reasons. Of course, all this is personal. The film opened in May 1983 but my own memory is seeing it at the late, lamented Scarsdale Plaza on either the Fourth of July or close to it and it was the first R-rated movie I ever got to see in the theater, so it seems appropriate. These memories matter.

So much of the reason for revisiting BLUE THUNDER is rooted in nostalgia but it’s necessary to admit that this always leads to admitting that the film is a good, solid piece of early ‘80s studio filmmaking but it would be a stretch to call it great. It’s not JAWS. It’s not SORCERER. As for whether or not it’s JAWS 2, we can debate that another time. The spectacle of BLUE THUNDER, written by Dan O’Bannon & Don Jakoby, is impressively done but it also has an uneven tone, veering from a violent ‘70s character study with all the post-Vietnam cynicism that implies to more of a special effects-driven ‘80s action film that’s all about the spectacle. You could even make the argument that director John Badham was trying to create what he felt the slick and flashy cinematic language of the decade was going to be, a few years before the likes of MIAMI VICE and TOP GUN decided it for everyone (after writing this, I’m realizing that a recent rewatch of Badham’s POINT OF NO RETURN which came exactly a decade later made me think he was trying to do the very same thing for the ‘90s, but I’m not sure he pulled it off for either decade). Even something like the catchy electronic score by Arthur B. Rubinstein very much feels like a precursor to what would become the Harold Faltermeyer/Jan Hammer sound of the period. The first part of the film has those remnants of the ‘70s with its lead character still haunted by Vietnam but by the time the second half of BLUE THUNDER begins, the ‘80s approach is all that matters. Which is still fun, just not as meaty. On a technical level, the film is still hugely impressive to look at but feels almost a little too flashy and maybe the appropriate word I should use is ‘weightless’ even if you’d think that the presence of Roy Scheider alone would add more depth to the whole thing. What begins as something about real issues involving privacy and military hardware mentioned in the opening disclaimer to sell us on the believability of it all becomes, in the end, about the action and pyrotechnics. Running 109 minutes, the pacing is tight and the film moves fast but a few moments to allow for a little more to chew on wouldn’t have been the worst idea.