First of all, it has a great score by Gil Melle. He did cool synthesizer stuff with stuff like The Questor Tapes and Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and he doesn't disapppoint here. Even at the dullest moments, you can count on the score to give you a jolt or two.
The main problem is that everything in this movie is just...slightly off-key. Give it a better actor than Lee Majors as the "hero," and a better old fogey/jetfighter than hammy Burgess Meredith, and do a little more than just rehash Farenheit 451 with gas instead of books, and this might have worked. Chris Makepeace is okay (although the juvie bad boy/computer hacker stereotype was already overdone by '81), and the plane vs. car action sequences aren't too badly done.
*shrug* I liked it. It wasn't better than Cats, but otherwise it works for me.
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