Paul Sorvino's Key to the Rocketeer Scene Is One of the Greatest Movie Moments of All Time

This article won't spend a lot of time explaining why 'The Rocketeer' is one of the best Disney movies of all time and why you should immediately watch it, but it is and you should. To understand the scene in question, what you need to know is that the hero of the film, pilot Cliff Secord (Billy Campbell), came across a jetpack and a helmet that allows him to fly around Los Angeles, towards 1938, and to be temporarily nicknamed the Rocket. Of course, in doing so, Cliff accidentally gets himself into a big mess that endangers his girlfriend Jenny (Jennifer Connelly) and entangles her with the FBI, Howard Hughes (Terry O'Quinn), an Errol Flynn style actor named Neville Sinclair (Timothy Dalton) who moonlights as a Nazi spy, and a group of gangsters working for said actor, led by Eddie Valentine (Sorvino). The film's climax begins at night at Griffith Observatory, when Sinclair and Valentine have taken Jenny hostage and say they won't free her unless Cliff flips the jetpack.

At this point, Cliff, Jenny, and us in the audience have learned that Sinclair is a Nazi in disguise, using his fame as a mask to hide his dirty and fascistic deeds. It's worth noting that at no point before this scene did we get any inkling of actual character shading; whatever charms "The Rocketeer" has, and there are many, the character work is largely (and intentionally) one-dimensional. There are good guys and there are bad guys, and the two will never meet. So Cliff's last gamble before handing over the jetpack seems doomed. Look yourself.