A ship has been attacked at sea by terrorists and is on fire. An American Navy helicopter is dispatched from a nearby warship to rescue the crew. Instead, it comes under fire from the terrorists and is downed. On a beach in Virginia, Navy Seals are waking up from a bachelor party. One of them is getting married today. While at the church with the bride walking down the aisle, pagers start blaring (pagers! Ha! Well, it was 1990). The Seals have a mission. Somewhere in the Middle East, the surviving crewmen of the downed helicopter are about to be executed when Navy Seals come through the windows and kill all the terrorists. The extraction proves difficult. Moreover, Lt. Hawkins (Charlie Sheen) comes across a stockpile of Stinger Missiles! He wants to expand the mission to include destroying the Stingers but Lt. Curran (Michael Biehn) overrules him. The team extracts and then faces a debriefing where Curran's decision is second-guessed. When an airliner is shotdown by a Stinger in Spain, Curran takes matters in his own hands.
A by the numbers action film, it provides several opportunities for the Seals to deploy, each time in a different method. Here they parachute in, there they are inserted via SCUBA from a sub, by helicopter, by boat, and so on. Joanne Whalley plays the love interest. The casting of the Seals is good. Biehn and Bill Paxton had both been Colonial Marines in Aliens (1986). Heck, Biehn had played a Seal previously in The Abyss (1989) and afterwards in The Rock (1996). Rick Rossovich, a Top Gun (1986) pilot, plays the Seal medic. Charlie Sheen and Paul Sanchez had both starred in Platoon (1986). Overall, it is entertaining but run-of-the-mill. The tragedies are telegraphed, the characters see little development, and the plot is predictable.
Good popcorn fun.
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