BLACK THUNDER is one in a glut of straight-to-video B-movie thrillers that were released in the late 1990s and about stolen military jets. The progenitor for these seems to have been John Woo's BROKEN ARROW which, while not a brilliant movie, is still much better than these lunk-headed rip-offs which all seem to share stock footage of aerial combat and explosions.
This story sees a super-duper prototype stolen by a renegade pilot and taken to Libya, where it will be used by Arab terrorists to bomb the West. Only Michael Dudikoff can stop the bad guys. Dudikoff looks surprisingly aged here considering it's only a decade since he first came to fame in the late '80s; he looks almost constipated at times and like he needs to go on a diet, although not quite as bad as Seagal. Richard Norton has a tiny cameo. The thrills are diluted and the whole picture feels quite insipid, especially with the addition of some ludicrously cheesy sex scenes that feel like they've been shoe-horned in from one of those late-night erotic thrillers starring Shannon Tweed.
This story sees a super-duper prototype stolen by a renegade pilot and taken to Libya, where it will be used by Arab terrorists to bomb the West. Only Michael Dudikoff can stop the bad guys. Dudikoff looks surprisingly aged here considering it's only a decade since he first came to fame in the late '80s; he looks almost constipated at times and like he needs to go on a diet, although not quite as bad as Seagal. Richard Norton has a tiny cameo. The thrills are diluted and the whole picture feels quite insipid, especially with the addition of some ludicrously cheesy sex scenes that feel like they've been shoe-horned in from one of those late-night erotic thrillers starring Shannon Tweed.