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A GUIDE TO HELICOPTERS IN CINEMA & TELEVISION |
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War
(aka: Bonha, 2002) - the climactic gritty battle scenes of Aleksei
Balabanov's hostage rescue drama sees Russian helicopter gunships devastate infantry
positions on a hillside where Chechen rebels are laying siege to the resourceful heroes'
taking refuge in an old stone tower. Two Mil Mi-24 Hinds spearhead the brief air strike,
with rockets and bombs, and then a Mil Mi-17 Hip attacks the remaining fighters with
grenades and machine guns. Later, after the medevac flight, several other military
choppers are seen on the ground at a Russian airfield.
War Of The Worlds (2005) - this remake by Steven Spileberg features brief shots of Apache helicopters firing rockets towards advancing tripod machines, but most of the military action remains off-screen. Warrior King (aka: Tom yum goong, 2005) - this Thai kickboxing movie stars Tony (Ong-Bak) Jaa, and has two helicopter scenes. The first big action sequence ends with a boat chase, and there's a gunman in an orange Bell 206 JetRanger shooting at our hero, before a pursuing boat gets airborne to hit and destroy the chopper, hovering just above the river. After the climactic fighting, the top villains flee to a rooftop helipad, but they fail to escape (in a Eurocopter AS 365 Dauphin) when the hero jumps off the building and kicks the 'lady-boy' baddie down off the winch cable. This last sequence was probably shot on a soundstage with a prop helicopter, CGI animated rotors, and a faked city-scape backdrop.
The Watcher (2000) - in this psychological thriller, Chicago police use helicopters to deploy SWAT teams on the rooftops surrounding a waterfront building, where a serial killer (Keanu Reeves) holds two hostages. Weapons Of Mass Distraction (1997) - satirical comedy about feuding media moguls (Gabriel Byrne, Ben Kingsley) has a tragic moment when the engine failure of a private helicopter makes it drop onto the helipad, for a slo-mo crumpling into a pile of twisted wreckage. The executive passenger crawls to safety, but the feckless pilot (a corporate heir) ends up in coma.
When Worlds Collide (1951) - a helicopter renders assistance to some flood-stranded refugees, then it rescues a boy from a rooftop, in natural disasters that herald the approach to Earth of another planet. Where Eagles Dare (1969) - Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood are the stars of this WWII adventure, which features the unlikely stunt of an Alpine helicopter rescue. "This film features a Bell 47G, disguised as a Nazi helicopter, bringing a German officer to Hitler's mountain-top fortress." - NATHAN DECKER
Who Dares Wins (aka: The Final Option, 1982) - Ian Sharp's underrated British action thriller has a squad of elite S.A.S. troops using Westland Scout helicopters to deploy on a rooftop in their climactic assault on the embassy building occupied by terrorists.
Wonder Seven (1994) - the early climax of this Hong Kong comedy-thriller sees the villains' leader kidnap the wounded heroine (Michelle Yeoh), and prepare to make his getaway by air from a corporate tower block. After throwing aside the hero (whose coat is shredded by whirling rotor blades), the chopper hovers inside the building then soars up through a rooftop opening just before a terrorist bomb explodes. However, the blast travels up a lift shaft and hurls an elevator-car skyward, damaging the helicopter and leaving it hanging from the extended crane-arm of a window-cleaning hoist. Of course, the battered wreckage drops to the street, eventually, and kills the injured bad guy on impact. All of this rotary action here is amazingly silly, but great fun, nonetheless! Woodstock (1970) - Michael Wadleigh's music festival documentary includes scenes of US Army helicopters dropping blankets, food, medicines (and even flowers) to the temporary community of 400,000 campers, during this New York event - when it's declared an official disaster area. Working Girl (1988) - Mike Nichols' yuppie comedy romance about an ambitious secretary (Melanie Griffith), includes a scene where scheming boss (Sigourney Weaver) returns from to New York after a skiing accident, landing at the Wall Street heliport in a Sikorsky S-76.
World Gone Wild (1987) - in this post-apocalypse western, a gang of bandits (led by former pop star Adam Ant) roll into a peaceful shantytown aboard a wheeled but flightless helicopter.
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