I watched this film on the premise that it had fighter pilots and former *NSYNC member, JC Chasez. I am glad to say that if I watched this with any further expectations, I would have been deeply disappointed.

To me, this movie felt like a rough draft and really needed to be polished. The special effects were tolerable at best. Some of the SFX seemed unrealistic, leaving the movie looking amateur. Most of the duologue was forced and seemed out of place, whilst other parts were bland and wooden.

Filming locations differed which changed up the otherwise boring plot. One redeeming feature is that the plot and characters are fulfilled without leaving you wondering 'what happened?' afterward.Overall, this film didn't keep my attention and unless you are a devoted fan of anything aviation related, I wouldn't bother watching this.

Overall not a bad movie.. but it was lacking. Better than the pathetic cheeze of Iron Eagle (or it's pathetic added on clones)

Don't expect "Top Gun" quality of production and it can be interesting. However don't expect Plan 9 either.

Some decent actors.. but poor direction from MVP whom can't direct or act his way out of a wet paper bag.

That said.. at least it's not another steaming pile of sh*t from Ewe Boll! (Some moron(s) somewhere keep giving that putz $ to make movies and he creates nothing but total crap.. worst director ever)

As for aircraft.. a decent display of older Mig-29's mostly which is not as common for an American movie.

Too bad they did not have a real director instead of MVP... perhaps with someone with actual directing skill this could have been a better production.

It helps a bit to understand this movie if you know it is a Russian / US joint venture. This explains the Russian and US filming locations and cast. It's entertaining if not fully comprehensible.

Fighter airplane buffs will enjoy the multitude of planes on display. The aerial combat is quite exciting and not that difficult to figure out who is who when they remove the mouth piece of the helmets.

It's not Top Gun at all. The surprisingly current and complicated story involves some Saddam weapon called the Rainmaker. A bunch of young hot shot pilots (kudos to makeup for making them look younger) are set up in a friendly fire incident and sacked. Then 7 years later some of them are recruited to destroy the weapon in Iran with Russian assistance. It gets a bit confusing then but the action is exciting including some over the top shoot outs at airbases. The multi national production does not look cheap even though there is a slightly amateurish vibe throughout. Hard to figure out at first who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

The cast is a bit better than the story. Cam Gigandet of Twilight and Troy Garity are the good guys. Mario Van Peebles is the villain. Shane West of Nikita is the good guy turned bad. Nice to see Rachel Leigh Cook on screen again and speaking Russian no less.

Overall a B movie can be entertaining even if you don't always know what is going on.