As for Josh Lucas and Jessica Biel as Navy stealth-fighter jet pilots in love with flying and (in a don't-ask-don't-tell sort of way) each other, they exhibit markedly less personality than EDI (pronounced ''Eddie"), the unmanned computerized drone plane that has just become the fourth member of their elite squadron. EDI speaks in the friendly metallic tones of HAL 9000's grandson and he's equipped with the latest advances in artificial intelligence. Artificial or not, this gives him a leg up on everyone in the film.
Lieutenants Ben Gannon (Lucas), Kara Wade (Biel), and Henry Purcell (Foxx) are not happy about bringing Robo-plane along on their tactical missions, but the project is the baby of their commanding officer, Captain George Cummings (Sam Shepard), who has that win-at-all-costs evil glint in his eye. W.D. Richter's script even makes a feint toward ethical debate: ''I just don't think war should become a video game," says Ben, upon which Cummings reminds him about the body bags. A scene or two later, Kara insists that ''if it's programmed by moral people, it'll be moral," but since she subsequently announces she has to go ''pee-pee," mature strategic analysis may not be the character's strong suit.
Anyway, such conundrums are moot, since the director is Rob Cohen of ''XXX" and ''The Fast and the Furious," and he has stuff to blow up. After the squadron's successful strike on a terrorist cell in Rangoon, EDI is hit by lightning, has its AI scrambled, and becomes jealous of Ben's prowess in the sky. The drone plane turns on the others and heads out to blow up a warlord's stockpile of moldering Russian nukes; Ben scrambles to reel the stray back in while Cummings plots how best to save his career. While ''Stealth" offers a superficial portrait of the ''new Navy" -- white, black, female -- Lucas quickly becomes the movie's blue-eyed top gun, while Foxx is sidelined and Biel's Kara has to bail out of her stalled Talon fighter. Over North Korea -- where else?
