Product Description

Fifteen year-old math prodigy Martin Smith, a rebellious and under-achieving student, is recruited to attend Falconleigh School, an exclusive private academy, where he uncovers sinister secrets about the true nature of his research for the shadowy Icarus Foundation. Codename: Icarus is an entertaining British thriller in the tradition of WarGames, with an empathetic young hero embroiled in a fantastic plot to take over the world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #128077 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-01-24
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 106 minutes

Amazon.com
Falconleigh School--financed by the mysterious Icarus foundation--is a celebrated private academy for gifted teens, and when Martin Smith is offered a place, he jumps at it. A brilliant but troubled 15-year-old, Martin has been hiding his talents for mathematics and physics from his parents and teachers. When he arrives at Falconleigh, Martin finds the staff a little strange, but the work is challenging and he quickly proves himself to be an unusually talented student.

Meanwhile, the British government is worried about the fact that its missiles keep exploding in midair during test firings. They send a Navy scientist to investigate, but at first he believes that the missile problems are simply accidents--neither the West nor the Soviets have lasers powerful enough to take out missiles at long range, and anyone else trying to develop such a system would need a large group of brilliant scientists working nonstop. Of course Falconleigh has exactly that, and soon the government investigators start to suspect that something very sinister is going on at the school.

Martin also becomes suspicious, especially when he sees a bird fall dead from the sky after flying over a building on the school grounds. He may be close to discovering the secret of Falconleigh, but the shadowy group who run the school are not going to let their plans for world domination be thwarted by a teenager. Mind control, murder, spies, and super-weapons combine to make Codename Icarus an entertaining young-adult thriller. Originally released in 1985, its Cold War paranoia can feel a little dated, but the Icarus Foundation's plan for missile-destroying lasers makes one wonder about what we read in the news today. --Simon Leake

Customer Reviews

Off to a great start
This really does get going well. Martin is a geeky teen. He's lonely,or rather alone in realms of physics and math he has no one to share with. And, as in so many teen fanatasies with a paranoid edge, he's a target of vindictive teachers and school administration. When an invitation to a school for gifted children suddenly appears, seemingly from nowhere, he leaps at it.

It exceeds anything he could have guessed at. He has huge freedom in his studies and schedule, amenities like a five-star hotel, and adults that treat him deferentially (the teen fantasy thing again). But a few birds die - dropped out of the air, in flight, and a few more secrets emerge. More people on appear on the scene, representing more and larger powers. Finally, the biggest secret of all is exposed, and ...

... Nothing. Let's just leave it at that until you see it for yourself. I felt that I had just seen two thirds of a movie, and was eager to see the end. No, that really was the end. Yes, Martin really is a good kid, just one with a really bad script.

//wiredweird