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'Stealth': Soaring disbelief just heightens fun

When hot-shot Navy fighter pilot Ben Gannon (Josh Lucas) learns that he will soon fly next to a computer-driven jet plane, he objects on the grounds that war should not become like a video game.

Sony Pictures Entertainment 'Stealth' B The verdict: A malfunctioning computer leads to military mayhem in this video game movie. Director: Rob Cohen Starring: Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, Jamie Foxx, Joe Morton, Sam Shepard, Richard Roxburgh, Ian Bliss Run time: 121 minutes Release date: July 29, 2005 Rating: PG-13 for intense action, some violence, brief strong language and innuendo. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate "Stealth"   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Perhaps, but as Rob Cohen shows with his big-budget, preposterous but giddily entertaining aerial action-adventure picture Stealth, it is apparently OK if movies give in and resemble video games.

Move over, Ben and your squadron pilots, buff Jessica Biel (Blade Trinity) and Jamie Foxx (who must have signed on before being Oscar-anointed for Ray). Make way for a UCAV (Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle) called "EDI" (Extreme Deep Invader). As soon as the plane's computer speaks with its creamy smooth, soothing voice, we know it will soon go bonkers and lethally malfunction. Why didn't screenwriter W.D. Richter (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) just admit his sources and call the computer HAL?

EDI's wayward ways lead to a chain reaction of calamities, including unauthorized missile launches in Tajikastan, a parachute drop into hostile North Korea, an emergency landing in Alaska and assorted global explosions, nuclear and otherwise. Suffice it to say Cohen (The Fast and the Furious) makes Michael Bay's The Island look like a Noel Coward drawing room comedy.

Some of the sequences, notably Biel's harrowing free-fall plummet beneath her disintegrating plane, are very effective. Others are so far-fetched they need to be seen to be disbelieved.

Low on credibility, but high on aerial derring-do and crashes through the sound barrier, Stealth is a hoot of a summertime guilty pleasure.