Air America

Air America (1990) is a war-set action comedy you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Roger Spottiswoode. After losing his pilot's license back home, hotshot flyer Billy Covington gets an offer he can't quite refuse: fly for a covert CIA airline running missions over Laos at the height of the Vietnam War.

Once on the ground, Billy (Robert Downey Jr.) falls in with a crew of pilots who gave up on rules and good sense long ago. His mentor Gene Ryack (Mel Gibson) hauls rice and medicine to mountain villages by day and guns on the side, stashing cash toward an early retirement. The deeper Billy gets, the clearer it becomes that the brass are smuggling opium behind the humanitarian cover, and he has to decide how much cynicism he can stomach.

It's adapted from journalist Christopher Robbins' book about the actual airline the CIA used to fight a war it could deny. The tone swings from broad slapstick to sharp anti-war satire, and the easy chemistry between Gibson and a young Downey carries the slack stretches. Good fun for fans of late-'80s adventure flicks with gunfire, jokes and moral rot in the background. Stream Air America (1990) online on iFILM.