Matcollis
This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.
GetPapa
Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible
Ketrivie
It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.
DJO189Doke
Magnus, I too was annoyed that no one on the set noticed the USAF doctor had one of her shoulder boards backwards. It was also a joke to see Hauer stuffed into that tight USAF uniform with his long hair. Whatever happened to preparing for a movie role? Hauer definitely needed to drop about 40 lbs and get a freakin military haircut.I enjoyed the aircraft scenes but it could have been a much better movie is someone had paid more attention to detail. Top Gun wasn't a whole lot better when it came to an F-14 in one scene with certain types of missiles and fuel pods, then in the next scene, what is suppose to be the same F-14, now has a completely different set up.I think one of the best scenes of a military aircraft in a movie was the F-18 Hornet getting shot down by the missile in "Behind Enemy Lines" with Owen Wilson and Gene Hackman.It is nice to see Robert Patrick doing such a good job now as the Colonel on the TV series, "The Unit".Don
Arccos
Well, this movie shows us that Mark Griffiths and producers think we all are idiots. If not how should we understand this:American pilots take off on Mig-29s. Suddenly all aircrafts turn to F-16s. Ha, a magic! After an action... Migs land. The magic again!Oh, did I mention that F-16s had Israel markings? Another magic: obviously unarmed L-39 trainers are bombing enemies.And more magic: while all movie is situated in Europe, we can see a desert in almost any flying scene.Maybe the director wasted all his magic on things above, because action scenes are incredibly chaotic and also explosions look awfully as if pilots bombarded with molotovs.OK, OK, this is a movie. I should write about its story... wait. A story? Yes there is SOME story in this film. And its horrible as well.
bob the moo
Several years after he was presumed dead after an "incident" in the Iraqi no-fly zone after the first Gulf War, Captain John "Doc" Holiday shows up, eager to pick up life where he left off. Former flying partner and friend Colonel Banning helps him get his old job back and the two are in action again over Bosnia as part of a NATO operation. However, even though the report of the incident looks clean, Holiday blames Banning for the years that he lost and seems not all together right in the old head there. As minor peculiarities turn into out and out barking behaviour, Banning starts to worry.Fifteen minutes into this film and I had yet to hate this film as much as everyone else seems to have done; I had managed to ignore the made-up history and enjoy the scenes of jets flying and men going "alpha roger, I'm taking fire" etc etc. However at this point the film shifted slightly to Banning's wife and the back-story where Holiday starts to semi-stalk the family. With this the film joined the heap loads of films that already exist within this similar "man/woman appears normal but gets obsessively crazy" genre (trips off the tongue doesn't it) and it doesn't even match the low standard of the majority of them.Let me just deal with the whole setting – that of military action in Bosnia in the mid-nineties; now I'm no expert but the whole thing was not only horribly simplistic (Americans were the good guys in the conflict and those on the ground were "bad") but it is also plain wrong. I won't linger on this too long though because facts are not the point of this film and, to be honest, if you're coming to a Rutger Hauer film expecting a history lesson then you deserve all you get. Ironically the rubbish history provides the only pieces of vague entertainment as the usual stock footage of planes and explosions and the actors inside planes against blue screens at least provides some distracting motion even if it never is exciting or involving (and potentially annoying if you pay too much attention to the identity-swapping planes). Meanwhile the usual stalker stuff plods around on the ground until, finding itself with no dramatic drive at all it simply ends with a ludicrous set piece involving tanks that have the keys left in them and a dogfight high above Bosnia. It is poor throughout and only made more annoying by just how obvious and predictable it all is.The cast act as a clue as to how average this is going to be, given that it features two men who really don't do anything to deserve bigger projects that this. Hauer is obvious from the start to the end and never makes for an interesting character. In his defence, Patrick at least comes across as a sort of real person but even he can find little of value to use in his performance. Glasser is the damsel in distress and does nothing but that. The support cast are all average, with nothing to do but spit out the required lines in the basic required fashion.Overall this is a very poor film that tries to milk two genres but does neither of them well at all. The Top Gun action is distracting but full of stock footage and historical stupidities; meanwhile the stalker stuff on the ground is plodding, dull and tiresomely predictable. Don't make the same mistake as me – just avoid this.
nigel0208
I suppose it must be really difficult to film with the US Air Force. So difficult, the producers of this movie clearly decamped to Hungary and shot the whole thing with MiG-29s, MiL-24 Hip helicopters and La-39 Albatrosses for the ground shots, but with Israeli F-16s, Nellis-based F-16s and Israeli Phantoms for the aerial sequences. Okay, so maybe I'm just a plane nut, but some of this stuff was sporting dirty great Russian red stars, and pilots were flying one type and getting in and out of another.
As for the tank, who knows, but I bet it was a Russian one!
