by MARK SLUTSKY

I knew Rob Cohen's Stealth was going to be something special the moment the evil, super-intelligent experimental jet plane started downloading MP3s off the Internet. And not just some MP3s, but, according to the nerdy tech guy in the movie, "All the music on the Web." All of the music! And this is to be their formidable foe.

But let's backtrack a little. It is some time in the near future, when the Navy has assembled a crack jet-based anti-terrorism squad consisting of two cool guys (Jamie Foxx, presumably under embarrassing contractual obligation, and Josh Lucas) and one smokin' babe (Jessica Biel). Just before they're to be sent out into the field, these three airborne musketeers are informed by their commanding officer (Sam Shepard, in a cruel parody of his role in The Right Stuff) that they'll be joined by a fourth teammate, an intelligent unmanned plane named...Eddie! Or rather, EDI, which stands for Extreme Deep Intruder, a name so head-shakingly phallic even the other characters in the movie comment on it.

Returning from a grotesque exercise in fantasy-revenge-wish-fulfillment - where our heroes collapse a tower containing the world's three "top terrorist leaders" - Eddie is struck by lightning, which causes his brain to go haywire and start illegally downloading music. Then, on a subsequent mission, he goes renegade, and must be stopped by his human partners.

This is where the movie really goes bonkers, and don't read any further if you don't want to know what happens, but this is really too good to leave out of my review: Lucas's character somehow saves Eddie's "life" (after saying something like, "You gave me your word, intelligent plane - I'm giving you mine!"), and then... they become friends! The two team up and fight the real enemy...North Koreans! I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Yes, dozens of Korean soldiers are killed for the crime of defending their country against a couple of rogue American planes that have been burning up the countryside. Yet, we're supposed to be rooting for the USA! Honestly, this movie is so dumb, so jingoistic and brain-dead it could easily be used as an al-Qaeda recruiting video.

Stealth opens Friday, July 29

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