Operation Mekong

OPERATION MEKONG 

(aka: Elite Force: Operation Mekong, 2016)

This Asian actioner features a red Bell 429 GlobalRanger landing next to a Eurocopter EC-135, that’s parked in a jungle clearing with another EC-135, and a yellow AS-350B3e A-Star. The movie also includes a mini-copter drone spying on street activity.

Later, there’s a flying stunt with a man dangling on a rope from the A-Star swooping over the jungle.

The climactic assault begins with the GlobalRanger and two EC-135 choppers, taking off with police troops aboard on a mission to capture the chief villain. 

The Bell 429 and the A-Star are used to pick-up the heroes, while the yellow EC-135 helicopter is tracking a speed-boat chase. 

The chopper swoops down to drop a rope and hoist up the heroes, and the injured villain, but enemy gunfire forces it to withdraw from the scene before the rescue is complete. 

Dead Rising 2

DEAD RISING: ENDGAME (2016)

This action thriller with zombies is a sequel movie to Dead Rising: Watchtower (2015). In a montage for the movie’s title sequence, there is a video library clip of an AS-350 A-Star in flight. 

For the climactic escape from a quarantine zone, a Eurocopter AS-355 TwinStar is the heroes’ getaway vehicle. In a gory stunt, one zombie is beheaded by the helicopter’s whirling rotor blades.    

Arrival

ARRIVAL (2016)

This sci-fi drama of human contact with alien visitors begins with a dawn flight, from the scientist heroine’s house, aboard a Sikorsky S-61 to the military camp in Montana. 

There’s a Black Hawk parked at the base, while Chinook transports haul cargo and supplies to the UFO landing site. 

Chinooks appear in the background of several later scenes. 

In a crisis of paranoid confrontation, three Apache helicopters chase away the departing spaceship. 

For the final evacuation, two Chinooks are waiting, on the ground, with rotors turning.

The Purge: Election Year

THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR (2016)

This sci-fi thriller includes a sequence with the villain’s team of mercenaries airborne in a futuristic gunship (digital visual effects) flying to attack the heroine’s ambulance van on the night streets of Washington D.C.

Call Up

THE CALL UP (2016)

This sci-fi action movie, about virtual war-games, has a Mil Mi-24 Hind (in a digital visual effects scene) that flies by the upper floors of a building, and then turns away to cruise over the ruined city. 

The helicopter gunship re-appears hovering just outside a window. Later, helicopter wreckage is found by the gamers just outside a doorway.

Deepwater Horizon

DEEPWATER HORIZON (2016)

Peter Berg’s suspenseful disaster movie is based on a true story. 

At Bristow heli-port, we see an airborne Bell 407 and an Agusta Westland AW-139 surrounded by several helicopters parked on concrete pads.

The morning flight has a Sikorsky S-92A carrying crew to the oil-rig. The big transport suffers a bird strike before landing safely at the off-shore location.

After the explosions, a US Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin is the first rescue flight to reach the burning platform.