Old Hollywood glamour meets a technological marvel in Disney’s The Rocketeer, now available in a 20th anniversary edition on Blu-Ray. Directed by Joe Johnston (Captain America: The First Avenger), the film takes us back to the era of World War II. A young test pilot named Cliff Secord (Bill Campbell) stumbles across a jetpack that has several rival factions searching for it. Among those are a Nazi spy and Howard Hughes (portrayed by Terry O’Quinn of LOST fame, and in this role he has hair!).
Secord’s beautiful girlfriend is Labyrinth’s Jennifer Connelly, and she is an aspiring actress desperately seeking the role of a lifetime. However, it doesn’t take long for her to become tangled up in the drama surrounding the jetpack and her boyfriend.
I haven’t watched The Rocketeer in a very long time, but I remembered that I really liked the movie. And I still do! I think Bill Campbell is a slightly goofy but very attractive leading man, and Jennifer Connelly is perfectly cast as the beautiful but not entirely helpless damsel in distress Jenny. Timothy Dalton, as actor Neville Sinclair, provides a dashing performance, though he easily has the cheesiest dialogue in the film. His character is a bit reminiscent of Errol Flynn, and the fight scene on the movie set is delightful to watch. Although I thought his hair in that scene more resembled Inigo Montoya’s than Flynn’s.
In spite of being released twenty years ago, the movie looks fantastic, and even the visual effects hold up extraordinarily well. And I think I’m going to have to purchase the score. I knew without reading the credits that James Horner was the composer. His style is so distinctive, and he is second only to the greatness that is John Williams, in my eyes. Or rather, my ears.
The climactic finale is perhaps a bit over the top (and includes what I would consider the most disappointing effects in the film), but it provides a satisfying conclusion. Still, if you want even more of The Rocketeer, there’s the graphic novel by Dave Stevens. I would like to familiarize myself a bit more with the source material to see how faithful the adaptation was.
Without hesitation I recommend getting a copy of The Rocketeer. It’s fun, wholesome enough for the entire family to watch, and I just love the costumes and glamour of the era.
In other words, “I like it!”