Stealth

And speaking of irony, there's a shortage of honesty aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, where naval captain Sam Shepard has rushed a computer-controlled stealth fighter plane to operational status well ahead of schedule. Nicknamed "Eddie," the plane can carry out missions with breathtaking precision, perform aerial maneuvers that the human body could never withstand, and download all its favorite Incubus songs off the Internet. Considered the perfect weapon for the terrorist age, when satellite technology allows for quick, surgical strikes from above, Eddie draws immediate suspicion from a trio of ace young pilots, played by Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, and Jamie Foxx. Signs of trouble appear in their first mission to Rangoon, where Eddie reveals a bit of a rebellious streak, but its circuits aren't rewired for evil until the lightning storm hits. Then it's up to the three mortal pilots to stop the plane before it drops a substantial nuclear payload.

But first, there's a weird interlude in Thailand, where the action grinds to a halt in order to get some character work underway, like establishing the romantic tension between Lucas and Biel by having them cavort around a waterfall in swimsuits. Meanwhile, back aboard the aircraft carrier, Eddie's hijinks have led the United States into all sorts of terrible confrontations with the likes of Tajikistan, Russia, North Korea, and common sense. Stealth contains an awful lot of talk about the dangerous remove of modern combat, and the moral consequences of raining death from above, but it's hard to take all that seriously when Cohen is cranking up the nü-metal and choreographing one international incident after another. If the U.S. were truly inflicting that much damage around the globe, then other nations would really hate us. Oh wait…