Always

Following up Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Spielberg's next film would the a throw back to different kind of movie, classic Hollywood romance with the film Always. With this film, Spielberg set out to recapture the charm of the Golden Age of Hollywood while also updating it to a more contemporary time, with some mixed results.

Pete Sandich (played by Richard Dreyfuss) is an expert pilot who, along with his best friend Al Yackey (played by John Goodman), fly WWII surplus B-26 bombers modified to dump water on forest fires.Pete tends to be a bit of a risk-taker as a pilot, much to the disapproval of both Al and his girlfriend Dorinda Durston (played by Holly Hunter), who works as an air traffic controller at the small airport they operate out of. One night, Dorinda confides to Pete that she's scared to death every time he flies into another fire and begs him to take a teaching job Al told him about and he agrees to do it for her. Before he gets a chance to make good on that promise, he gets called to go put out another fire and this time doesn't make it back. Much to his surprise, he finds himself in the middle of a burnt out forest, greeted by a woman in all white named Hap (played by Audrey Hepburn). She reveals that not only is he dead, but that he's sent back to Earth to act as a sort of Guardian Angel to an up and coming pilot, Ted Baker (played by Brad Johnson) who wants to fly planes to put out forest fires as well. Once he arrives, he finds himself at the fire fighting school he was supposed to move to with Dorinda, and much to his surprise, finds it's being run by Al in Pete's place. Not only that, Dorinda is living there as well and working at the school. Things become complicated when Ted and Dorinda meet and begin to fall for each other while he can only sit by and watch.

Steven Spielberg and Richard Dreyfuss bonded over their shared love of the movie A Guy Named Joe, which Always is a remake of, while they shot Jaws together back in 1974. Dreyfuss stated it was one of his favorite movies having seen it over 35 times and Spielberg cited it as one of the films that inspired him to get into filmmaking. Both expressed a desire to remake the film at some point in the future and when that opportunity arose, they decided to collaborate on it. Working from a script by Jerry Belson, this film updates the original's World War II setting to the Montana wilderness and the fighter pilots become firefighting pilots. Other than that, the plot remains more or less the same. The problem is that the risk-taking that Pete does in the original film makes more sense when in an actual war time scenerio where those risks could directly save the life of other pilots, but taking those same risks in a forest fire, especially one pretty far removed from populated areas, seems extremely and unnecessarily reckless. The film does try to head this off a bit when Al discusses their job in relation to the WWII pilots in Europe with Pete, stating that the risks Pete takes are not worth it, unlike those pilots. Still, despite this, the film does craft a reasonably entertaining movie, especially any time the movie is centered on Pete, Dorinda and Al. They found some rather gorgeous locations to shoot in as well, with the forest fire scenes shot around Libby, Montana and they managed to take advantage of the 1988 Yellowstone Wildfires to capture some incredible forest fire footage to use in the film. This is then pared incredibly well with some fantastic model effects to create the genuinely thrilling firefighting scenes. For the more character driven moments in the film, Spielberg goes for a nice, simple and character driven approach that tones down his usual trademarks, but still the little Spielberg trademarks do pop up through out the film, but he's less showy with his camera work here, which fits the more intimate nature of the film.

Richard Dreyfuss is his usual charming, witty self here, which makes hot shot Pete more endearing than he probably normally would be. Holly Hunter is great as Dorinda, as she conveys the genuine concerns with Pete's daring do in his airplane, as well as in the second half of the film portraying a character who is shattered by the death of her boyfriend and trying to put her life back together. She also brings the same urgency and drive to the role that she showed so well in Broadcast News, that in a way makes her the most compelling character in the film. John Goodman has a good supporting role as Al, who has a good character arc in the film. In the first part, he is a lovable goofball and as a pair with Pete seem to enable one another as daring, devil may care pilots. But when Pete's plane explodes in front of him, his character has dramatically and understandably changed when we see him again as a teacher at the flight school. He takes it all much more seriously and is trying to instill in his students how to do the job right and be safe and Goodman does a good job playing both sides of that role. The weak link in the film for me though is Brad Johnson as the new pilot, Ted Baker. Johnson does the best he can with the role, but it's such a bland and underwritten part that I just couldn't take him seriously as someone as complex and driven as Dorinda would even begin to find appealing aside from the fact that he is handsome. Beyond that, it's just completely blank. His character has almost no discernible personality, especially when compared the the witty and charismatic Dreyfuss. And if he is meant to be a more stable pilot than Pete was, that's fine but you still need to show that with the character. I never once saw him as a viable romantic prospect for Dorinda, who had far more chemistry with Al and would make more sense for the two of them to come together. Because of this, the scenes of Pete watching Ted and Dorinda spending time together and getting closer don't have the required romantic weight because I never felt for a second the two of them would last.    

Always has it moments, especially in the first half because Richard Dreyfuss and Holly Hunter have some real chemistry together. The film works any time the two of them are together and John Goodman makes for an amusing third wheel to those two. But when it starts trying to set up a potential new romance after Pete has died, the film just starts to lose steam for me, although it does pick up a bit again in the end for the climax of the film. While I don't believe Spielberg has made an out and out bad movie, this is certainly one of his lesser ones. Perhaps frustratingly so because it could have been better with just a little more work.