Really Surprised!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The movie is surprisingly subdued in its pacing, its characterizations, and its go-for-broke sensibilities.

This was an enjoyable film for pilots as the action was quite real and some of the technical aspects of flying were accurate. For example, in the beginning there was a scene where the aircraft needed a hot start and the main character had to wait it out on the runway to get the plane restarted. On the other hand, flying through downtown LA was clearly dumb. At times the humor was cheesy, but overall it was fun to watch with the great flying sequences.The main characters were likable and real. The outcome at the end was far-fetched considering the scale of the crimes, but I don't think that was the aim of the movie.

I watched this with a couple of pilot buddies of mine. I'll start with what I liked because the list is quite small.The flying. Apart from a few shots which were obviously CGI, the rest were actual aircraft actually flying, and the production team did a great job of making them look and sound fantastic. The fact the producers chose to go down that route instead of doing them entirely in CG deserves some credit.But the list of gross factual errors, bad dialog, silly direction, and holes in what is already a paper thin plot pales in comparison with the bad pacing. For me, the pacing totally ruined any enjoyment I might have received from this film. One of the action scenes in the middle of the film was far better done than the one at the end so the second half of the film felt rather anti-climatic.

Your usual brainless action flick that still entertains you enough when all the good films are already rented out is usually about 90 minutes. Why they made this horrible ride 23 minutes longer is beyond my comprehension because the movie just doesn't have enough substance for that. The basic story of some "cool" guys drug trafficking with airplanes, getting mixed up in some bad stuff and in the end pulling off a "glorious" rescue mission that makes them the good guys COULD be entertaining enough as a basis. Unfortunately we get confronted with dialogue that is barely more interesting then the white pages, acting that makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look like a Oscar winner and action scenes that, except for the showdown, are so boring that not even an "exciting" soundtrack and fast cuts can make it really interesting. And even the showdown isn't that cool.Save your money for something else, you'll only end up very angry if you don't.

I was fortunate to see this film at last year's AFM market in LA and I found this film to be very enjoyable. The flying scenes are the best I've seen since Top Gun as I've heard from producers that all of actors did their scenes while actually flying in the planes, something apparently never done before in any film. This film could be release in an IMAX theater the flying scenes are that good.The acting is solid, plot is well developed, you will be surprised by some of the cameos, and there are some funny scenes in this film.I highly recommend it as fun action adventure film and I would love to know where I can get a Blue Ray DVD!