Stealth
Columbia Pictures | Release Date: July 29, 2005 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
35
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 31 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
12
Negative:
15
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
PremiereSara Brady
Stick it out through the first ten incoherent minutes or so, and Stealth is an invigorating reward, especially the tense final half-hour. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianM. E. Russell
While you're in the theater, it's actually -- heaven help me -- pretty fun to watch. Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
This giddy summer extravaganza does deliver aerial thrills with eye-dazzling visuals and ear-smacking (though beautifully designed) sound. Read full review
63
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
If you like hard bodies and hot engines, if you want to feel like you're inside a cockpit or a video game with someone else working the joystick, you'll find decent escape from the summer doldrums in Stealth. Read full review
60
Dallas ObserverBill Gallo
If the Navy is looking for splashy recruiting tools, it could do worse than Stealth, a zillion-dollar action movie stuffed with futuristic jet fighters, glamorous carrier pilots and an overload of explosive, mostly digital derring-do. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
A slick piece of summer entertainment that is counting on elaborate special effects to make its derivative, convoluted story line all but irrelevant. Read full review
60
EmpireSimon Braund
On one level, Stealth is technically breathtaking, viscerally thrilling action cinema of the highest order. On another, it is slavering, state-of-the-art war porn. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
A sort of retarded "Top Gun," Rob Cohen's Stealth revisits the world of cocky fighter pilots and war games turned real, but it has some serious moral quandaries on the brain, and too much thinking gets it into trouble. Read full review
50
L.A. WeeklyScott Foundas
Even Cohen can't dull the loony romanticism of the movie’s finale and, to his credit, stages one truly spectacular bit of action midway through, when Biel bails out behind enemy lines and narrates each harrowing moment of her earthward plummet. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Though Stealth's strengths are obvious -- high-tech marvels and a good cast -- so are its flaws. At its worst moments, a mad robot seems to have taken over the movie, too. Read full review
50
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
Makes a serviceable summer shoot-'em-up, but it's surprisingly trashy and rather stupid, and its efforts toward being a gripping military drama in the Tom Clancy tradition are fairly pathetic. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJoshua Katzman
While it's loaded with visceral thrills, it never rises above the level of an extended video game or an advertisement for the military. Read full review
42
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Stealth, a dregs-of-summer knockoff, is too ponderous and inept to serve a comparable function now, yet the film's lack of thrust may be related to an absence of conviction about its own war-is-a-videogame clichés. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Hollywood's latest virtual movie, features impressive action sequences -- all created through technology -- a thin story, cardboard characters and snicker-inducing dialogue. Read full review
40
VarietyRobert Koehler
Aiming to join the Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay school of American movie war games, Stealth is just too dumb to make the grade. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Plays like a slapdash assemblage of the greatest hits of conspiracy-minded action cinema. Read full review
38
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Plastic characters, chaotic camerawork, lots of things blowing up, and an incredibly dumb screenplay. In short, it represents a great time at the movies for anyone who has recently undergone a frontal lobotomy. Read full review
38
Philadelphia InquirerDavid Hiltbrand
If Stealth were a recruitment film for aircraft-carrier duty, one would be tempted to say, "Mission accomplished." As a feature film, it's a washout. Read full review
38
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Stealth is an offense against taste, intelligence and the noise pollution code -- a dumbed-down "Top Gun" crossed with the HAL 9000 plot from "2001." Read full review
38
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
Flimsy and forgettable, but it does have a few worthy action and special-effects sequences. Read full review
30
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
The dialogue is often drowned out by engine noise. Read full review
30
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
What's interesting about Stealth isn't its nitwit story... No, what's interesting about this movie - and many others of its kind - is that it continues the love affair Hollywood, that hotbed of liberalism, has long had with militarism. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Brought down by repeated bursts of high absurdity.
25
New York PostKyle Smith
The scene where a pilot bails out in Stealth is so over-painted with CGI that it doesn't look as real as the sequence starring Shepard that inspired it in "The Right Stuff," a movie made with model airplanes. Read full review
25
Miami HeraldPeter Debruge
Stealth is basically the kind of movie a 13-year-old boy given an infinite budget and creative freedom might cook up between Xbox games. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
It's astonishing what little impact even the most imaginatively choreographed and well-filmed aerial escapades can have when they're presented as neither an expression of a character's personality, nor in the context of a compelling mission. Read full review
25
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, xXx) is no stranger to cornball excess but Stealth is his chef-d'oeuvre, a movie so audaciously preposterous and jingoistic it plays like a parody of the genre. Read full review
20
Village VoiceEd Halter
Its action sequences, more geeky than thrilling, fail to rescue the laughable plot. Read full review
20
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Even by the degraded standards of dim-witted summer blockbusters, this is sorry stuff. Read full review
12
Boston GlobeTy Burr
For a movie to pretend, in the face of the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children directly or indirectly caused by our presence there, that we can wage war without anyone really getting hurt isn't naive, or wishful thinking, or a jim-dandy way to spend a Saturday night at the movies. It's an obscenity. Read full review
10
Washington PostStephen Hunter
It's not new. It's not interesting. I wish it would go away. Read full review
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