Hot Shots I
- Spojler:
- Hot Shots has been described as "Top Gun meets Airplane!". The film begins at Flemner Air Base 20 years prior. A pilot named Leland "Buzz" Harley (Bill Irwin) loses control of his plane and ejects, leaving his co-pilot Dominic "Mailman" Farnum (Ryan Stiles)
to crash alone; although Mailman survives, he's mistaken for a deer
owing to the branches stuck to his helmet and is shot by a hunter.
Topper Harley (Charlie Sheen) wakes up from a nightmare he's having about the event when Lt. Commander Block (Kevin Dunn) asks him to return to active duty as a pilot in the U.S. Navy. This poses a dilemma for Harley, as he previously left the Navy to live with Native Americans.
Harley becomes romantically involved with his therapist, Ramada (Valeria Golino), although she's already involved with another fighter pilot (Cary Elwes),
who hates Topper because of the loss of his father "Mailman" to Buzz
Harley (and believes Topper may do the same to him). Amid the chaos,
the owner of an aerospace firm is trying to sabotage the mission in order to make the current fighter jets
look bad in hopes that the Navy will replace them with his German-made
jets. However, Topper Harley successfully completes the mission to
destroy a nuclear power plant despite his jet's malfunctioning armament.
Hot Shot II: Part Deux
- Spojler:
- At the beginning of the film, a rescue team invades Saddam Hussein's
palace to rescue a group of hostages. But things go wrong when they are
ambushed by Iraqi guards who open fire. While the gunfight ensues,
Saddam is awakened, and with his sleep mask still on starts shooting
blindly all around the interior of his palace. The rescue team is
captured and subdued just before Saddam runs out of his palace
screaming and shooting wildly into the air and falling into the
fountain.
Since his last adventure, Topper Harley (Sheen) has retired from the Navy and has become a Buddhist in a small Buddhist village in the wilderness. Colonel Walters (Crenna) and Michelle Huddleston (Bakke), CIA, arrive and watch a muscular Topper fight in a Muay Thai competition (here called Dim-Sum fighting, in a spoof of the Rambo III
opening scene) in a hilarious sequence which results in the crooked
bookmaker's comical defeat. After Topper's victory, the Colonel and
Michelle persuade Topper to come out of retirement in order to rescue a
rescue party who went in to rescue a rescue party who are being held as
hostages in Iraq. The leader of the Iraqi forces is, of course, Saddam Hussein (Haleva).
At first Topper refuses, but when another rescue mission led by
Walters also goes awry, he finally agrees and parachutes into an Iraqi
jungle with Harbinger (Ferrer), Williams (Colyar) and Rabbinowitz (Stiles),
close to the heavily guarded hostage camp. They all land successfully,
except for Topper, who gets snagged in a tree. He soon frees himself
with his patented all-purpose "Swiss Army" Bowie knife (a running joke throughout the film). Their contact turns out to be Topper's former love, Ramada (Golino),
who guides them to an abandoned fishing boat that she had prepared for
their transportation, with fishermen's clothes in the wheelhouse. She
and Topper briefly reminisce, and Ramada explains that she was married
before she ever met Topper, but could not tell him about her husband,
Dexter (Atkinson), for complicated reasons. She also informs him that Dexter is one of the captives being held by Saddam.
They all set off down the river. Later, an Iraqi patrol boat passes
by and the Captain boards their fishing boat. After witnessing their
poor fishermen impersonations, the Captain boards the patrol boat and
is about to sail out of sight when he sees Ramada, in disguise as a man
since women are forbidden to fish, enter the ladies room. Assuming they
are cross-dressers, he orders his fellow crew members to open fire.
Topper's squad abandon ship at his word; Topper takes up the fight, but
at the last instant runs out of ammo, to which the Iraqi Captain laughs
sarcastically. Topper hurls a grenade, which lands in the Captains open
mouth and explodes, destroying him and both boats. When US President
Tug Benson (Admiral Benson in the previous film) hears of the supposed failure of yet another mission, he decides to go to Iraq and take matters into his own hands.
The commandos all reach shore safely (Topper does not do quite so well). Ramada picks up something Topper had dropped: a mole,
given to him by Michelle after they had slept together. Topper grows
suspicious of Harbinger since he wasn't around when the patrol boat
came. They eventually reach the Iraqi hostage camp, where an outrageous
gunfight ensues, which the Americans win despite overwhelming odds.
During the battle, Topper finds Harbinger hiding out and at first
accuses him of being the sabotuer; Harbinger reveals that he's giving
up battling but Topper calms him down.
While the squad evacuates the hostages, Topper enters Saddam's
seemingly abandoned palace. He runs into Saddam, who pulls out his machine pistol
and commands Topper to surrender. Topper quickly disarms Saddam and
they engage in a heated yet comical sword fight. President Benson
arrives and orders Topper to go and rescue Dexter, which he does, while
Benson and Saddam pull out lightsabers
and continue the duel. Benson eventually defeats Saddam by spraying him
with a fire extinguisher, upon which Saddam and his dog solidify, crack
and melt, only to form again as Saddam in a Terminator 2 fashion, but with his dog's head fur, nose, and ears.
In the meantime, tired of waiting, the squad heads back to the army
helicopter, where Ramada discovers that Michelle is the saboteur who
imprisoned Dexter and reveals they used to be roommates at university.
After a complicated revelation, Ramada returns Michelle's mole and then
proceeds to chase her over an assault course similar to American Gladiators.
They then started fighting on two platforms with Ramada winning by
hitting Michelle's in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her and
making her fall off the platform.
Dexter arrives with Topper and insists on taking a picture of Ramada
and Topper, claiming "under other circumstances, you'd make a great
couple." However, he backs away too far (in order to take a picture of
them) and topples rather obliviously over a cliff, at which point
Topper and Ramada confess that "he really was a wiener". Colonel
Walters arrests Michelle as President Benson joins the escapees. Saddam
arrives and is about to shoot down the chopper when Topper and Ramada
get rid of extra weight in the chopper by pushing a huge piano out of
the open door, which crushes Saddam and in the style of Wizard of Oz
his toes curl up and disappear under the piano's broken remains. Topper
and Ramada smile and kiss as they all ride off safely (literally) into
the sunset, although the chopper gets a little scorched from flying
through the sun.
