Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

the audience applauded

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

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.

The plot, special effects, and any similarity to current day USAF capabilities & operations was so far off-base that I didn't even notice the poor editing job that they previous reviewer mentioned.I only suffered through the first half-hour of the movie before I had to put myself out of my misery & turn off the TV.Clearly this was a low-budget movie, and not only did the USAF/DOD run away from any agreement to provide a liaison for basic technical accuracy, but the producer apparently didn't bother to have ANY adviser for military 'culture' or aviation matters.They couldn't even track down some surplus fighter pilot helmets & oxygen mask assemblies -- what they depicted as O2 masks were actually some modified SCUBA diver breathing regulators!

A perfectly preposterous plot taking place in the "near future" I suppose. It's based on the idea of an "Around the World" hypersonic(what's the difference between Hypersonic and supersonic?) plane race... But that's not all... The race is, of course, being broadcast AND the "network" want's good ratings! Death Race 2020? I love watching the "late movie" on terrestrial broadcasts... It reminds me of when I was a kid. I would love to know who picks these movies. None the less, this is the only way I would see real, contemporary "Cormanesque" B-Movies. This movie is exactly what I crave when tuning in to late Sunday night broadcast television... Totally goofy but, just like a country music song, I have to see what happens in the end.

(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*