Simply A Masterpiece

Fresh and Exciting

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Blistering performances.

This movie is terrible, but it's so terrible that in some ways it's funny. The movie is very low budget and no one did their homework so if you have ever vaguely met anyone in the air force or if you are a pilot there will be some funny stuff to laugh at. I can't decide though if it's funny or embarrassing when they try to talk shop aviation, it's painful and they try to do it through the whole movie. I also love how there are these Air Force characters that show up a few times and they are all wearing the same Halloween Senior Airman uniform. I rolled over laughing when one of them says "Hello Major!" Anyway this movie makes no sense. Wardrobe makes no sense, dialog makes no sense, the technical stuff makes no sense. Oh and for some reason the CG guy had a thing for the Eurofighter Typhoon because it plays all of the planes. The end which I'm not going to elaborate on makes no sense, you should watch it just to experience the feeling of a writer stepping on the logic center of your brain for a few minutes.So in short if you want to waste some time there are better bad aviation movies, go watch one of the ones with dinosaurs.

(2008 edit: Try to keep in mind, while reading, that I was 16 when I wrote this.)I don't even know where to start. They slapped an F-16 Fighting Falcon patch on the guy's jacket, and yet an F-16 was never even shown in the flick. Of course, all the fake jets they used tried to *look* like F-16s - if they didn't have two engines. The oxygen masks they used looked like gas masks. Not only is the air THIN up there... it's TOXIC too! Wow, how futuristic. It's also impossible to fly they way they were. Ugh... wow, this movie is a black hole, a straw, a pump, a jet INTAKE, or (insert name of something that sucks worse here).That's not even talking about the horrid job they did with the audio and the "Infomercial" audience who, during one scene, mysteriously broke into astounding applause for no apparent reason. The slo-mo was there, the music was there... but why? Where's the situation?Speaking of slo-mo... uh... mind telling me WHY there was so much slo-mo? It's like "Woow, dude, this guy's, like... flying...".They also left the script hanging like a bunch of loose threads. During the second air refueling scene in the storm, they completely left out how the REST of the refuelings went. One went bad, they made a big deal over that, and never told us how the rest went. Last time I checked, they were running out of fuel with no other options, and...uh... so how did the rest get fuel? *sigh*I just can't stop thinking about why they bought that F-16 patch off eBay and yet never even used an F-16. Heck, they never even MENTIONED F-16s to give them credit in this movie. Also, there was another real-life fighter (what, an F-15 or F-18?) on the front cover... yet... not in the movie. All fake, computer-generated jets. I bet the writers went to, like, a Russian air force base, saw the "For Rent!" signs in the windows of the fighters, and said "Wow, a script idea!" :-)Then... oh jeez... that little part with the knocked-out pilot. Somehow or another, there's a Matrix-like vitals monitor (which use PUMPS as visuals for breathing...) - as if this were VR or something, and it says "Oh Man! This Dude's Dying!". They "dock" this jet inside the refueling plane, pull out the pilot, and do all this stuff to him, including sticking him, like a sword, with a gigantic syringe or something ("HEE-YA!"). That whole scene lost me. Oh well, onward.The ending? 4 pilots are already dead. Two are left to battle it out, and one of them goes down (not the hero of the movie, noooo). The hero of the movie thinks "oh no i couldn't possibly win this because my only competition's engine blew up! NOOO! I have GOT to eject a perfectly good plane, forfeit 25 MILLION bucks, and save one of the 5 pilots who went down! WOO!".... What were these writers thinking?! *sigh*This movie is my new official "Bad" benchmark.Well, gotta give the writers and director kudos for effort... *heh*

While an interesting movie, it really seemed unfinished. The sound quality and the editing are of the worst I've ever seen in a professional movie. Sometimes during scene changes the original sound is retained during the cuts so it changes volume as the scene changes. There's one really bad noticeable example of this when Chris (Adam Baldwin) is making an announcement and the first part of the scene shows him from the left side, then it cuts to a close up of his face. The audio is extremely different between the two cuts, yet the scene is supposed to be continuous.Another strange thing about the editing is when they'd "follow" Chris around during the TV broadcasts, but as he would be moving forward, the cuts would be seemly random, from his front, left side, right side, and back. It's hard to explain, but when you watch a person moving forward, the cuts need to progress as if he's moving forward. This movie had him jumping all over the place, it actually gave me a headache.Other times, really noticeable overdubbing takes place where the voice doesn't even match the movements of the actors mouth. The air-show audience reminded me of an infomercial audience; their energy didn't match what is going on at that time, and their audio cuts in and out abruptly with them, when sometimes the audience audio should have continued into the next scene, fading out over time.Also, when the two major disasters took place in the air, the audio didn't mirror the "urgency" of the visual. While a disastrous effect is taking place visual, the sound did not raise volume or create urgency -- it took a few moments to realize something bad was happening, because the sound did not give much audio clue to it. I think this alone caused some of the great emotion that could have been attained in this movie to fall completely flat.And what was with that trailer-trash couple sitting on their couch in the living room that gets cut to during the movie????? My humble opinion is that if you're going to cut to random at-home TV people, at least use a lot of different people so we don't start to think this single at-home TV family is part of the plot.Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen a movie with such choppy, sloppy, editing, or such bad sound in my entire life. I was shocked as I watched it that a movie could actually be released when it seems it's not even ready. I liked the story and I liked the actors. It's strange these days to see a movie where the tech is screwed up because normally that's the flawless parts of the movie and it's usually the writing or acting that's bad.This movie could have been 10 times better if it had better sound or editing! Why didn't the producer fire the editors? That's what I want to know!

This is the first time writing here in IMDB. Reason: The movie has been the most awful I've ever seen. All flight scenes are done by computer and none of them are even close to photo realistic. I thought that at least the planes shown on the ground are real, but no! The director doesn't know anything 'bout flying and the flight scenes has nothing to do with real aviation (I personally have a pilot licence - so I do know something). I'm personally a big fan of aviation movies but this one is the biggest flop ever!