The movie is through and through a propaganda fluff piece. Intentional CCP untruths being propagated. Movie talks about china being invaded, when we all know china is the aggressor, constantly harassing Phillipines, Taiwan, Vietnam with its sweeping claims of sovereignty over the sea and the sea's estimated 11 billion barrels of untapped oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas available despite losing its case in UNCLOS. China's hostilities towards India are well known. That china purports to possess stealth technology by stealing, honeypotting, and hacking US defence systems is well known. This movie is just a diversion claiming that china developed its stealth tech indegenously when everyone knows its just stolen.

"Lei Yu" (the competent Yibo Wang) is an aspiring test pilot who is selected to take part in a prestigious programme to improve the efficiency of the Chinese Air Force's jet fighters. A bit of rivalry with "Deng Fang" (Yosh Yu) and inspiration from their commander "Zhang" (Jun Hu) makes sure the young man and his equipment are tested to the extreme - but can he rise to the challenge? It certainly has a bit of the look of "Maverick" (2022) to it, with some impressive aerial photography and dog-fighting and it also tries to imbue something of the engineering and science to the plot - crediting the young airmen with skills well beyond just being able to fly a plane. Sadly, though, the producers just couldn't (or wouldn't) steer clear of the political jingoism that rather nauseatingly lauds the virtues of their Air Force against an unknown (English-speaking) foe that is constantly harassing and threatening them. By mid-way through I felt rather sorry for "Lei Yu" - to say he seemed a bit accident-prone would be like saying Jonah liked whales - so the fact that he survives at all is quite a remarkable feat! There's the merest hint of a romance with his doctor "Shen Tianran" (Dongyu Zhou) but for the most part this is all about a young man's determination to succeed. It's perfectly watchable with some decent production standards and had it kept off the flag-waving grass, it could have made for another example of well-enough made high-octane cinema. At times it just smacks too much of a party rallying cry though, and that lets it down.

The two stars is for the effort of AI generative text. Fokkea provides a nice copy and paste from chatgpt using at least topgun as one of his keywords.

As for the movie - It opens with two f35s flying at sea level and causing damage.. presumably due to sonic boom? Some dude gives chase to the Americans (with awful accents) who basically are saying "we go where we please" over the radio. The Chinese interceptor jet then has an engine fire and glides 60kms back to base, kick-starting the Chinese stealth fighter programme. What the follows is a movie full of lots of illogical malfunctions that serve as a prop for emotional damage... ejector seats, bird strikes, drogue shoots. Another gimmick is that the throttle always seems to have a 'more than afterburner' segment, similar to the neverending gears in the fast and the furious. It's terrible, patriotic and the FX are pretty flimsy.