Stealth | |
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Theatrical release poster
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Directed by | Rob Cohen |
Produced by | |
Written by | W. D. Richter |
Starring | |
Music by | BT |
Cinematography | Dean Semler |
Edited by | Stephen E. Rivkin |
Production
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Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date
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Running time
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121 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $135 million |
Box office | $76.9 million |
Stealth is a 2005 American science fiction action film starring Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, Jamie Foxx, Sam Shepard, Joe Morton and Richard Roxburgh. The film was directed by Rob Cohen, director of The Fast and the Furious and xXx. The film follows three top fighter pilots as they join a project to develop an automated robotic stealth aircraft.
Released on July 29, 2005 by Columbia Pictures, the film cost $135 million to make, but was panned by critics, and was a box office bomb making only $76 million worldwide, one of the worst losses in cinematic history.
In the near future, the United States Navy develops an aviation program to deal with international terrorists and other enemies of the state quickly and quietly, and project controller Captain George Cummings is authorized to develop new technology to achieve these objectives. First, the project develops the F/A-37 Talon, a single-seat fighter with impressive payload, speed, and stealth capabilities. Over 400 pilots apply to participate, but only three are chosen: smart hotshot Lieutenant Ben Gannon, tomboyish Lieutenant Kara Wade, and street-wise, philosophical Lieutenant Henry Purcell. Their first test mission scores 100/100, inflicting maximum casualties with minimum collateral damage.
Cummings hires Dr. Keith Orbit to develop an artificial intelligence (AI), the "EDI", which will fly an unmanned combat air vehicle. The autonomous fighter jet is placed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Philippine Sea to learn combat maneuvers from the pilots. This sparks some controversy. On the one hand, human pilots possess both creativity and moral judgment, while a machine cannot fully appreciate the ugliness of war; additionally, if robots fought the battles and soldiers no longer died in combat, then war would no longer be terrible and might become like sport. In contrast, a machine pilot is not subject to the physical limitations of a human pilot, can calculate alternative ways to achieve objectives faster and more accurately, and theoretically does not have ego.