When Marvel was looking for potential directors for last year’s Captain America, their choice of Joe Johnston, the director of The Rocketeer, a period piece action flick set in the same era, was met with the approval of fans. Anyone who has seen The Rocketeer would understand why: it captures the classic aesthetic, the air of a more innocent time, and the futuristic thrills included in any story about a man who straps a rocket pack to his back to save lives and capture the imagination of the world. Joe Johnston wrote a love letter to a bygone era of filmmaking and punctuated it with a few sci-fi twists and WWII intrigue. You could criticize it for its hammy performances from Bill Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, and Timothy Dalton, but to do so would be to miss the point. It’s not a mindless action picture but it is a film meant to elicit nostalgia while elaborating on a story every kid wishes they lived themselves.
Cliff Secord (Campbell) and Peevy (Alan Arkin) haven’t had the best luck in recent years, and it only seems to have gotten worse when Cliff’s test run of their plane sees it destroyed by an entanglement with a chase between a few gangsters and a man transporting a mysterious piece of technology. With their plane in tatters, it seems like Cliff will be pulling clown duty at local fairs for a few more years before they can cobble together another machine for competition. This comes as a disappointment not only to Cliff and Peevy, but also Cliff’s girlfriend Jenny (Connelly) who longs for Cliff to have the money to give her some of the finer things in life. The discovery of a jetpack gives Secord the chance to be a new brand of pilot when he straps it on and saves the life of a plane on the verge of disaster. The existence of this newfound Rocketeer sets the world abuzz and alerts governments, gangsters, and a famous actor with shrouded ambitions to a technology everyone thought had been destroyed. With that, the race is on to learn the identity of the Rocketeer and capture his jetpack for purposes unknown.
The Rocketeer fully embraces 40’s nostalgia and makes good on fulfilling the expectations of any fans of the comic book source material. It doesn’t skimp on sleazy villains, brutish gangsters, overt themes of patriotism, and the wide-eyed, unbridled enthusiasm of youth; this is a film that doesn’t worry about whether or not it appeases the sarcastic tastes of contemporary audiences, it just wants to recapture the innocence of 40s sci-fi and crime thrillers, and it does that beautifully. It might require you to overlook plotholes and some cheesy characterization, but if you give yourself over to the inherent wonder of The Rocketeer, you’ll have a great cinematic experience.
The major disappointment of The Rocketeer stems more from how Disney has chosen to advertise it as a digitally enhanced version of the film, updated from its original 1991 appearance. With every Blu-ray that means better resolution and crystal clear sound, but their push in marketing the Blu-ray has made it sound like they touched up the green screen effects used when use of the Rocketeer’s jetpack requires the film to juxtapose the hero against digital backgrounds. If there were any improvements actually made on this front, they don’t show, and instead the dated technology used presents The Rocketeer with the same problem all films using it have when transferred to Blu-ray: the contrast between the actors and the green screen is quite glaring in high-definition. Fans of the film can forgive the film its age, but it’s a shame Disney has attempted to talk up the release as anything more than a transfer to a slightly higher resolution.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
The lack of any retrospective featurettes is a bit disappointing for anyone revisiting the film for the first time since they saw it in theaters in 1991, especially since you have to figure that Joe Johnston would have something to say about it now that Captain America has gained a fair degree of critical and audience acclaim. Even Timothy Dalton, who has taken on his share of comical villain roles since The Rocketeer, would have made a great audio commentator.
"The Rocketeer" is on sale December 13, 2011 and is rated PG. Action, Adventure. Directed by Joe Johnston. Written by Danny Bilson & Paul De Meo (screenplay), Dave Stevens (graphic novel). Starring Alan Arkin, Jennifer Connelly, Timothy Dalton, Billy Campbell.
