The South American drug cartels have been getting too aggressive so the American government decides to take them out with Apache helicopters.  Missions leaders Tommy Lee Jones and Dale Dye know that these helicopters are the ultimate weapons of death and that things could go terribly wrong if they recruit the wrong pilots.

So, of course, they get Nicholas Cage and Sean Young to fly them.

Fire Birds was an attempt to redo Top Gun with helicopters.  It does actually improve on Top Gun in that it gives the pilots an actual villain to fight.  The drug cartels and the German mercenary (Bert Rhine) that they hire are good B-movie villains and an improvement on the faceless and apparently nationless bad guys who showed up at the end of Top Gun.  What Fire Birds cannot improve on are the flying sequences because fighter planes are just more exciting than to watch than helicopters.

The best thing about the movie is that it brought Nicolas Cage and Tommy Lee Jones together and their acting styles mesh far better than I think anyone would expect.  Sean Young is about as believable as a helicopter pilot as you would expect her to be, which is to say not at all.  There’s a reason why Young’s best performance was as a robot.

“I.  Am.  The.  Greatest!” Nicolas Cage says in the movie and he sounds convinced.  Fire Birds makes the case that Cage is the greatest when it comes to making something bad watchable.  This movie would be thoroughly forgettable if not for his presence and the same can be said about a lot of other movies as well.  But, Tommy Lee Jones can lay claim to the “Greatest” title as well.   Five years after Fire Birds, Tommy Lee Jones would tell Jim Carrey, “I cannot sanction your buffoonery,” and the passage of time has shown that Jones knew what he was talking about.  Nicolas Cage and Tommy Lee Jones should make more movies together.