Airwolf DVD Review:

Yet another weary TV action/drama from the eighties with an obsession with gadgets, Airwolf is more and more bearable as viewing continues, but has a rocky start because of disappointing characters. While Knight Rider had an interesting relationship between a man and his Trans Am, McGyver had charisma, and The A-Team had nothing but strange characters, Airwolf has a hero who does little but brood, and a supporting comic sidekick who is sadly outdated and extremely unfunny.

Stringfellow Hawke (Jan-Michael Vincent) is a renegade pilot hiding out in his small cabin as a recluse in fear that all of the people close to him will die. His only friend is an old war buddy of his father, Dominic (Ernest Borgnine), who owns a helicopter company. Together the two of them act as consultants and stunt pilots for films, but when a top secret battle helicopter is stolen they are pursued to retrieve it. CIA division chief Michael Coldsmith-Briggs III, also known as Archangel, promises to help find Hawke’s missing brother if he helps get the deadly copter back.

This helicopter, Airwolf, is something of a jet mixed with a copter, and a little bit of tank mixed in as well. Basically it is a ridiculous idea that we are made to believe because of the magic of television. The helicopter is not the show’s biggest problem however. The biggest problem with the show is that the characters are so uninteresting that it takes half of the season to even begin to care what happens to them. As a critic I forced myself to get to this point, but as a viewer I would have given up.

Vincent as Hawke is mostly just annoying because he seems unable to smile for most episodes. He is a brooding and depressing force which is certain all will go wrong for him, and most of the time he is right. It is almost like watching a heartbroken teenager in the pilot, and when things do go right for him it doesn’t change his monotonous performance nearly enough. On the opposite side is Borgnine as Dominic Santini. I enjoyed Borgnine a great deal in some of his earlier performances, especially Marty and The Dirty Dozen, but in this show he is often irritating. The jokes always seem to fall flat but that never stops Borgnine from giving off a holler of a forced laugh anyways. His character also always seems to be telling stories that are as boring as the dialogue in many episodes.

Perhaps the most irritating characters on the show come from Archangel. Archangel himself is not a bad character, but the costume designer for him and his partners had some strange ideas. Every time Archangel shows up he seems to be with one of a few cocky young women, and along with Archangel they always wear all white. When I say all white, I mean from head to toe, in matching, colorless, and dated costumes. I have no idea why this is, but it just adds to the strangeness of the show.
The action in Airwolf, when not covered up by cheesy electronic music, is actually quite fun. As the season goes on the stories also improve greatly and some of them are actually quite good. As a whole, however, I have to wonder if there weren’t better shows to bring to DVD.

The quality of the transfer is actually not too bad. Most of the scenes look fairly good, and the audio is surprisingly good if you can ignore the music. There are no special features, but frankly, who needs them with a show of this quality. There is English captions and French and Spanish subtitles.



Ryan Izay