Blue Thunder

Blue Thunder is a 1983 action thriller set in Los Angeles, where police officer Frank Murphy, a helicopter pilot still carrying the weight of his Vietnam War service, is paired with a younger partner named Lymangood. The two are assigned to test an experimental police helicopter equipped with advanced surveillance technology and heavy weaponry. Their routine assignment turns dangerous when Murphy learns something he was not meant to know, and he finds himself using the very aircraft he was testing to defend himself and expose those responsible.

The film was directed by John Badham, the fourth of the fifteen features he has directed in chronological order, arriving between WarGames and American Flyers. Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby wrote the screenplay, and Gordon Carroll produced it for Columbia Pictures and Rastar Productions. Roy Scheider plays Murphy, with Warren Oates as Braddock, Candy Clark as Kate, Daniel Stern as Lymangood, Paul Roebling as Icelan and David Sheiner as Fletcher among a credited cast of fifty; sixty-eight crew members are credited.

Made for 22 million dollars, the film took about 42 million dollars worldwide, a solid return on its production cost. On IMDb it holds 6.4 out of 10 from 22,926 votes, and on TMDB 6.2 out of 10 from 575 votes. A critics' rating of 6.6 out of 10 from 23 reviews puts professional opinion slightly above the audience scores on both sites.