Cooktopi The acting in this movie is really good.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

jodyfranz However with today's technology and killing prowess of the worlds' militaries the tech displayed in this movie is underwhelming. I remember watching this when it first came out when the helicopter seemed so futuristic. Now, not so much. It doesn't take away from the story line or the action. It's no Lethal Weapon but is definitely worth a watch.

temlakos-1 Blue Thunder is a rarity in film. When it first came out, it packed them into theaters with the wry humor of its characters and dialog, and the white-knuckle action for which everything else is a set-up. And once that action starts, it does not stop until the very end.Still, it explored a theme that, to some viewers (including me at the time), seemed far-fetched and typical Hollywood political. But today I watched it again, on the Sony HD Channel. It could have been made today! In short, this film was thirty-one years ahead of its time. And when you watch it, and consider modern headlines and recent history, you find yourself leaping out of your seat and shouting, "They knew then!""Blue Thunder" is, of course, the name of the world's first police SWAT helicopter gunship. The name is slightly ironic, for reasons you will have to watch the film to catch. More to the point: the filmmakers built a truly frightening piece of machinery, and one of the things that makes the lead character such a hero is that he discovers, to his horror, what Blue Thunder is really meant to be. Had the developers of "Blue Thunder" the helicopter simply taken a Cobra helicopter gunship and painted it police blue (or maybe Mountie red), instead of Army green, the results would be no more chilling to anyone who thinks that maybe--just maybe--the government is not his friend. But of course the concept developers didn't do that. They built something that looks far more fearsome than an Army Cobra ever looked.And no one embodies the cynical thrust of the project better than Malcolm MacDowell (Col. F. E. Cochrane USA). He is villainous almost to insanity, as cinematic villains almost have to be. He gets to be as bad as he can be, and clearly enjoys it.Nor can you imagine a better hero than Roy Scheider (Officer Frank Murphy, ASTRO Division). And very early in the film you will know why he is the only one who would want to, and be able to, expose "Blue Thunder" and its underlying project for what they are.For this much I will reveal: Blue Thunder the film exposes the awful over-militarization of municipal police departments in the United States over the last half-century. That's what John Badham (director) and his writers dared expose in 1983. Blue Thunder the project is the logical endpoint of that over-militarization (and you will readily accept that logic before the film is halfway over). That might have seemed far-fetched in 1983. Today, as the Department of Homeland Security (in real life) sells or gives away Army surplus Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAPs) to police SWAT teams, you can only wonder whether police air-support divisions will soon turn into "Air SWAT" forces. If a killing/snooping machine like Blue Thunder the helicopter was feasible then (and I have confirmed it was, from military sources), imagine what a modern-day Blue Thunder could do! Which means: as you watch this film now, you might forget, except for one temporal reference to a then-upcoming event in Los Angeles history, that you are watching a thirty-one-year-old film set in 1983. This film will have you checking the sky to see if anything like Blue Thunder the helicopter is looking at you (and listening, too).Warren Oates provides almost comic relief as a boss who hears the immediate complaints and doesn't understand what Murphy is trying to tell him. Candy Clark, as Murphy's girlfriend, provides more comic relief--but also sets up her part in the wild adventure of the last act in a way that Anton Chekhov would stand in awe at. The two TV reporters will have you wishing more like them were "in the business" today.One last bit of advice: after you see this film, get active to make sure it stays fiction. Do not, in other words, be a "JAFO." And you'll have to watch the film to get *that* reference, too.

disdressed12 i remember watching this movie years ago and not being all that impressed,but this time i really liked it.it's basically about an experimental helicopter which a certain group of people have a nefarious purpose for.the test pilot founds out about this and decides to try and stop their plans for it.the movie is never boring.in fact it's quite exciting at times and fast paced.there's some intrigue thrown in for good measure,but mostly it about the action specifically aerial chase sequences,which are pretty well done.Roy Scheider plays the test pilot while Daniel Stern plays his co-pilot.for me,Blue Thunder is an 8/10

Howlin Wolf This one was perhaps unfairly overlooked for those of you who like glossy 80's product used to glamorise hardware. I would've liked to have seen the director make more of a choice between 'investigative thriller' and straight-up action movie, because trying to do both makes it occasionally uneven. More than compensating for this though is the great cast and impressive gadgetry. Ya gotta love Roy Scheider; he made a great leading man, and this is definitely one to look out for if you feel he didn't quite catch the wave he should've done, after "Jaws"...It's a little bottom-heavy, with most of the action being shoehorned into the last segment, but if you garnered some enjoyment from Badham's other crowd-pleasing fare of the decade like "War Games" and "Short Circuit", then you should also be able to derive some form of pleasure from this.