Cut from the same cloth as the period set, family action adventure film as the Indiana Jones movies, The Rocketeer is a good old fashioned blast. It has a good old fashioned score (one of James Horner';s finest), a gorgeous Amblin entertainment look helped by Johnson's Spielberg inspired direction, a great, old fashioned character-based story with well structured action sequences to keep the audience dazzled, and a lively cast that includes Alan Arkin's miracle engineer, Paul Sorvino's gangster and Timothy Dalton's swashbuckling actor (who's clearly having a blast, cursing "bloody" every ten minutes, as he tends to do). Plus you've got Jennifer Connolly, in the pre-serious stage of her career where here babyfaced, youthful charm and smouldering looks, off-the-scale cuteness and barely contained breasts squeezed into a ball gown thrilled an entire generation of boys (and men).
ILM's flying man effects are top notch (their Zeppelin stuff is a lot better than their Last Crusade efforts), the action fun and chocked full of humour, the characters appealing and Bill Campbell's over-eager and naive leading man a different kind of hero. I also like the way it weaves historical events (the Hollywood movie scene, Howard Hughes, Nazis) into the narrative. Based on Dave Steven's graphic novel, The Rocketeer often comes across as a Marvel superhero story with the everyday, bloke next door character discovering his new abilities before utilising them to fight a greater evil but it's retro setting and style may have been off putting to those being awe struck on Terminator 2 the very same summer of 1991, for it to find a huge audience.
The Rocketeer is a film summed up by it's poster; a fun, beautifuly produced blast from the past served up with all the expertise of 1991 cutting-edge cinema. An under-rated and overlooked movie that deserves another look.
