Flight of the Intruder

1991 American film directed by John Milius
the novel in which the film is based on

Flight of the Intruder is a 1991 war film directed by John Milius, and starring Danny Glover, Willem Dafoe, and Brad Johnson. It is based on the novel of the same name by former Grumman A 6 Intruder pilot Stephen Coonts. The film received negative reviews upon release, and was Milius's final theatrical release as a director.

Lieutenant Jake "Cool Hand" Grafton and his bombardier/navigator and best friend Lieutenant Morgan "Morg" McPherson are flying a Grumman A 6 Intruder during the Vietnam War over the Gulf of Tonkin towards North Vietnam. They hit their target, a 'suspected truck park', which actually turns out to be trees. On the return to carrier, Morg is fatally shot in the neck by an armed Vietnamese peasant. Landing on USS Independence with Morg dead, a disturbed Jake, covered in blood, walks into a debriefing with Commander Frank Camparelli and Executive Officer, Commander "Cowboy" Parker. Camparelli tells Jake to put Morgan's death behind him and to write a letter to Sharon, Morg's wife. New pilot Jack Barlow, nicknamed "Razor" because of his youthful appearance, is then introduced. Lieutenant Commander Virgil Cole arrives on board and reports to Camparelli, who later tells Jake's roommate Sammy Lundeen to take Jake, Bob "Boxman" Walkawitz and "Mad Jack" to fly into Subic Bay the next day and help Jake unwind. Jake goes to see Sharon, but she has already departed. He runs into a woman named Callie Troy, who is packing Sharon's things, and they have a small, tense encounter. After an altercation with civilian merchant sailors in the Tailhook Bar, Jake runs into Callie again. After they reconcile, dance and spend the night together, she reveals her husband was a Navy pilot himself and was killed on a solo mission over Vietnam. Jake returns to the carrier, where Camparelli confronts him regarding the bar incident, and Cole reports in Jake's favor. Cole and Jake are paired on "Iron Hand" A 6Bs loaded with Standard and Shrike anti radiation missiles for SAM suppression. During the mission, after a successful strike, they encounter and manage to evade a North Vietnamese MiG 17. Jake suggests to Cole that they bomb Hanoi, which would be a violation of the restrictive rules of engagement (ROE) and could get them court martialed. Cole initially rejects the idea. On the next raid, Boxman hits the suspected target, but is shot down by another SAM and killed. The North Vietnamese in Hanoi gloat on TV over the downing of U. S. aircraft. Cole then agrees with Jake's plan to attack Hanoi, deciding to hit "SAM City", a surface to air missile depot. To secure their mission, they coercively enlist the aid of the Squadron Intelligence Officer, who has been caught urinating in the commander's coffee decanter, being the Phantom Shitter who's secretly repeated this deed throughout the first half of the film. He warns Jake and Cole that there's no chance of succeeding in their mission, but he is soundly ignored. Sent to bomb a power plant in the vicinity of Hanoi, they drop two of their Mark 83 bombs, keeping eight for the missile depot and set a new course for Hanoi for their independent bombing mission. Arriving at SAM City, on their first pass, their armament computer malfunctions and they are forced to bomb 'by hand' (guesswork), and after barely surviving a barrage of enemy fire, their bombs fail to release. The two come back around, rerun the route, successfully drop their bombs and manage to obliterate the missile depot in a spectacular display of secondary explosions. Upon returning to the carrier, Camparelli angrily chastises the pair for their independent mission and informs them of their impending court martial at the U. S. Naval Base Subic Bay. During the preliminary hearing, Cole and Grafton are criticized for their actions, and informed that their naval careers are essentially over. The charges are dropped the next day when Operation Linebacker II is ordered by President Richard M. Nixon, and the unauthorized mission is covered up. The next day, Camparelli grounds Jake and Cole while the rest of the carrier's A 6 and A 7 crews conduct a daylight raid to destroy anti aircraft emplacements: the tangible, lucrative targets they've longed to attack. Camparelli is hit by a ZSU 23 4 Shilka AA tank and crash lands, his bombardier dead. Sammy Lundeen is hit and has to head for the ocean. Razor is ordered by Camparelli to disengage and obeys. Jake and Cole, defying orders, man their Intruder, launch and fly one more time to assist Camparelli. They destroy the ZSU, but are forced to eject from their heavily damaged aircraft. After bailing out, Jake lands near Camparelli's crashed Intruder and runs to cover with Camparelli. Separated from Jake, Cole is mortally wounded in hand to hand combat with an enemy soldier. On the radio, he lies to Jake, telling him he has already gotten away. Moments later, a pair of U. S. Air Force A 1 Skyraiders ("Sandy") appear and provide cover. Cole instructs the lead Sandy to drop ordnance on the spot he has marked with smoke. He is killed along with a few dozen NVA soldiers. Cole's final voice transmission to Sandy is: "Alpha Mike Foxtrot"! (meaning "Adios, mother fucker!") Jake and Camparelli retreat into the woods, pursued by a sniper. A "Jolly Green Giant" helicopter picks up the two men, and the Skyraiders make one final napalm run to finish the job. Later, recovering from his injuries, Jake joins his crew and Camparelli, all in their Navy whites, on deck to prepare for entry at a port of call. Jake and Camparelli reconcile their differences, and the movie ends in rolling credits.

The US Naval Institute, which publishes Proceedings, the professional journal of the US Navy, had a success publishing the first original novel in its 112 year history with The Hunt for Red October. They were flooded with manuscripts and decided to publish as a follow up Flight of the Intruder by Stephen Coonts. Coonts was a Denver lawyer who had flown during the Vietnam War; he was discharged in 1977 after nine years of active duty, including two combat cruises aboard the Enterprise, 1600 hours in Intruders and 305 carrier landings, 100 of them at night. He had sent the book to 36 publishers, 30 of whom refused to look at it, four who rejected it and two that he was waiting to hear back from. The book spent over six months on the best seller list and sold over 230,000 copies in hardback. Coonts signed a contract with Doubleday to write another novel about pilot Jake Grafton, Final Flight. The Naval Institute Arm sent Coonts a letter asking for a licensing fee to use the character again.

Film rights were bought by producer Mace Neufeld, who had filmed The Hunt for Red October. A script was written and John McTiernan was originally going to direct Intruder but dropped out and eventually served as an executive producer. The Russian sequences in the film of October had been rewritten at Sean Connery's request by John Milius, and Milius was signed to direct Intruder. Milius commented about the novel: "It was such an internal examination of that life and what it takes to fly. There was such wonderful reality on life aboard a naval carrier and life in Vietnam. I loved the whole idea of what those guys do". Milius rewrote the original script. According to Sam Sayers, who worked on the film as technical adviser, "I never saw the first script, but I understand there were scenes of pilots smoking pot and that kind of nonsense. It was unrealistic Top Gun in Vietnam. Milius just went back to the book. It's the reason he wanted to make the film". Coonts said that "most books don't seem to survive, but this was an excellent transition. It takes 12 hours to read the book on tape, and it's certainly abridged 13 flights in the book are scrunched down to four, and the role of the girl (played by Rosanna Arquette) is smaller. But the themes of the film are the same as the book". Rosanna Arquette had the female lead. Gere dropped out and was replaced by Willem Dafoe. Danny Glover played the squadron commander. The film included an early role for Tom Sizemore. Danny Glover spent five days aboard the aircraft carrier USS Independence for research, which he said made him appreciate the story more: "It's about the camaraderie and the bond of trust that exists between men under stress. The camaraderie and trust I've seen among the men here, many only 18 or 20 years old, in peacetime, has got to be that much stronger under conditions of conflict, especially if they don't feel they're supported from up above".

Flight of the Intruder required early variants of the A 6 Intruder, the A 6A conventional bomber and A 6B equipped with specialized electronics and weapons for suppression of enemy air defenses missions. All operational A 6s at the time of filming, however, had been updated to the A 6E without the TRAM targeting equipment, or KA 6D standards. The A 6 featured in the crash scene was a detailed mock up patterned from an actual aircraft but with a foreshortened rear fuselage. The large scale (1/160) miniature of Hanoi and "Sam City" was recreated to serve as the backdrop for rear projection work. Other aircraft included a Sikorsky SH 3 "Sea King" rescue helicopter in various action sequences, with brief appearances of U. S. Navy aircraft such as the North American RA 5C Vigilante, Vought A 7 Corsair II, Grumman C 2 Greyhound and McDonnell Douglas F 4 Phantom II, as well as a MiG 17 in North Vietnamese markings. Two privately owned Douglas A 1 Skyraiders also flew in the rescue sequence.

In the novel, the A 6 Intruder pilots operate from the fictional aircraft carrier USS Shiloh. Grafton enlists his new bombardier Cole and Abe Steiger (the squadron intelligence officer) to attack the headquarters of the Communist Party in Hanoi, but Steiger is unable to find any information on Communist Party Headquarters among the targeting materials available aboard the Shiloh. They ultimately decide to attack the National Assembly building as requesting targeting information about Communist Party Headquarters would raise unwanted attention and suspicion. Neufeld said the studio did not want the film to compete with two other military aircraft themed films, Memphis Belle and Air America. Also he wanted to film an additional scene aboard the USS Ranger in San Diego with Danny Glover and Brad Johnson: "We worked around the navy's schedule. After all, you just don't put in an order for one of these things to come into port". The film was eventually released in January 1991. It coincided with the beginning of Operation Desert Storm.

The film earned $5,725,133 in its first weekend on 1,489 screens, making it the fourth most popular film in the US. Its final theater gross was $14,587,732, failing to recoup its $30 million budget.

Flight of the Intruder earned mostly negative reviews upon its release, with many reviewers noting inconsistencies in plot and continuity errors in the final edit, as well as the low budget special effects. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 25% approval rating based on 12 reviews, with a rating average of 4.80/10. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale. Roger Ebert called the film a "mess", noting that "some scenes say one thing, some say another, while the movie develops an absurd and unbelievable ending and a final shot so cloying you want to shout rude suggestions at the screen". In a 2019 interview, Stephen Coonts, the author of the book on which the film was based, gave two reasons for the poor quality of the film. Firstly, his book being poorly suited for adaption into a film, and secondly micromanagement from the US Navy, which was providing access to its ships and aircraft for the film.

Flight of the Intruder, a video game based on the original novel, was released for personal computers in 1990 and re released for the Nintendo Entertainment System around the same time as the film. Developed by Rowan Software, Ltd. and published by Spectrum Holobyte, the game allowed players the choice of flying either the Grumman A 6 Intruder or the F 4 from aircraft carriers against targets in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

The theme music of Flight of the Intruder was later used as the opening theme of the Belgian TV humorous talk show/game show series Schalkse Ruiters.