Firefox

Director: Clint Eastwood Clint Eastwood

Overview

Producer/director/star Clint Eastwood takes his sweet time getting Firefox started. Eastwood plays Mitchell Gant, a past-his-prime U.S. pilot, smuggled into the Soviet Union to steal a new Russian supersonic fighting plane. Fortunately the KGB men are as burnt out as Gant, enabling him to abscond with the plane with the greatest of ease. The rest of the film is a protracted chase, pitting Gant against scores of impersonal MIG pilots. Based on a novel by Craig Thomas.

Product Details

Release Date:	06/01/2010
UPC:	0883929107773
Original Release:	1982
Rating:	PG
Source:	Warner Home Video
Region Code:	1
Sound:	[Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	2:16:00
Sales rank:	693

Special Features

Closed Caption; ; Vintage Featurette Clint Eastwood: Director; ; Theatrical Trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Clint Eastwood	Mitchell Gant
Freddie Jones	Kenneth Aubrey
Warren Clarke	Pavel Upenskoy
Ronald Lacey	Semelovsky
Kenneth Colley	Col. Kontarsky
Nigel Hawthorne	Pyotr Baranovich
Thomas Hill	Gen. Brown
Clive Merrison	Maj. Lanyev
Kai Wulff	Lt. Col. Voskov
Dimitra Arliss	Natalia
Austin Willis	Walters
Michael Currie	Capt. Seerbacker
James Staley	Lt. Cmdr. Fleischer
Ward Costello	Gen. Rogers
Alan Tilvern	Air Marshal Kutuzov
Oliver Cotton	Dmitri Priabin
Bernard Behrens	William Saltonstall
Richard Derr	Adm. Curtin
Woody Eney	Maj. Dietz
Bernard Erhard	KGB Guard
Hugh Fraser	Police Inspector Tortyev
Stefan Schnabel	First Secretary
David Gant	KGB Official
John Grillo	Customs Officer
Czeslaw Grocholski	Old Man
Barrie Houghton	Boris
Neil Hunt	Glazunov
Vincent J. Isaac	Sub Radio Operator
Alexei Jawdokimov	Code Operator
Wolf Kahler	KGB Chairman Andropov
Eugene Lipinski	KGB Agent
Phillip Littell	Code Operator
Curt Lowens	Dr. Schuller
Lev Mailer	Guard at Shower
Fritz Manes	Captain
David Meyer	Grosch
Alfredo Michelson	Interrogator
Zenno Nahayevsky	Officer at Plane
George Orrison	Leon Sprague
Tony Papenfuss	GRU Officer
Olivier Pierre	Borkh
Grisha Plotkin	GRU Officer
George Pravda	General Borov
John Ratzenberger	Chief Peck
Alex Rodine	Captain of the Riga
Lance Rosen	Agent
Gene Scherer	Russian Captain
Warwick Sims	Shelley
Mike Spero	Russian Guard
Malcolm Storry	KGB Agent
Chris Winfield	RAF Operator
John Yates	Admiral Pearson
Alexander Zale	Riga Fire Control Chief
Igor Zatsepin	Flight Engineer
Konstantin Zlatev	Riga Technician
David Huffman	Captain Buckholz
Klaus Löwitsch	General Vladimirov
Laura Linney	Voices
Marion Dougherty	Actor
Mary Selway	Actor
Maurice Jarre	Conductor,Composer

Technical Credits

Alex Lasker

Wendell Wellman

Clint Eastwood	Director,Producer
Alex Lasker	Screenwriter
Roger Dorney	Special Effects
John Dykstra	Special Effects
Fritz Manes	Executive Producer
Al Miller	Special Effects
Robert Shepherd	Special Effects
Wendell Wellman	Screenwriter
Rick Alexander	Sound Effects
Bub Asman	Sound Effects
Les Fresholtz	Sound Effects
Robert G. Henderson	Sound Effects
Charles Gaspar	Special Effects
Don Johnson	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

This oft-overlooked spy thriller was not a hit for Clint Eastwood but it is one of his most interesting efforts from the early 1980's. Firefox benefits from an intricate script that blends genres and offers unique twists on familiar elements. For example, the story's espionage angle is given an added edge by the fact that Eastwood's character is a pilot sent in on a rushed mission and not a trained spy: as a result, his mistakes and the fear he feels in unfamiliar surroundings enhance the suspense of his mission. Eastwood does well in the director's chair, orchestrating the many suspense sequences in an effective, low-key style that eschews action in favor of carefully-built tension. He also deploys some large-scale visual effects by John Dykstra in an impressive manner during the jet-driven finale. The character of Mitchell Gant stretches Eastwood out of his comfort zone as an actor -- the character's flashback scenes require a level of Method-acting intensity that Eastwood never quite summons up -- but he does a solid job of portraying Gant's quiet fear and paranoia on the mission. His work in this area is aided immensely by excellent support performances from Freddie Jones as a dryly humorous British intelligence agent and Warren Clarke as a stern but brave Russian operative who helps Eastwood behind enemy lines. To sum up, Firefox is a much better film that its reputation suggests and well worth the time for spy movie fans and Eastwood aficionados alike.