The rocketeer

The movie lacks the wit and self-mocking irony of the Indiana Jones movies, and instead seems like a throwback to the simple-minded, clean-cut sensibility of a less complicated time. The movie stars Bill Campbell as Cliff Secord, the young test pilot who dreams of winning a big air race but instead finds himself with the opportunity of a lifetime when he straps on a contraption dreamed up by an old codger named Peevy Alan Arkin.

Of what use is this contraption?

The rocketeer movie

Need I reveal that the man who possesses it may hold the possibility of world domination in his hands? Slight problems are ignored, such as: What condition would the hordes of Nazis arrive in after their trans-Atlantic one-man flights? Would they run out of fuel? Be badly sunburned? Get their heels toasted by the flames? Carry sandwiches?

A Nazi spy ring has been deployed to capture the prototype Rocketeer outfit, but the dummkopfs mistakenly steal an Electro-Lux vacuum cleaner instead, and meanwhile Cliff straps on the contraption and goes forth to battle for truth, justice and the American way. And there is also, of course, his girlfriend Jenny, played by the doe-eyed and pneumatic Jennifer Connelly.

Even when the special effects are elaborate, they seem old-fashioned. The virtues of the movie are in its wide-eyed credulity, its sense of wonder. Connelly is sweet and sexy as his girlfriend, and projects the same innocent sensuality of the classic B-movie sexpots — an ability to seem totally unaware, for example, that she is wearing a low-cut dress.

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from until his death in In , he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.