Hyper Sonic

I normally wouldn't waste my time writing comments on drivel like this but it just makes one wonder; who watches a movie like this and gives it a *10*? It truly boggles the mind when one sees that out of 60-some voters, 14 of them voted this carcass a 10 out of 10! It was a B-movie. I can understand where some might consider it to have B-movie charm. But even at that; it might rate a 6 or a 7 at most. Does this movie REALLY, in ANYONE'S view, deserve to be rated alongside the greatest movies of all time? Does even someone who enjoyed the campy eye-candy (which was there in a couple of scenes) consider this to be deserving of being as good as film-making gets?

So I'm ranting. I can only say that such a rant is the BEST commentary this film ever deserves. If anyone wants to know how this film rates; then someone utterly aghast over more than 1 out of every 5 people rating this film a *10/10* speaks volumes about it's quality (or utter lack thereof).

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.

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.

During the opening credits, we see two young boys playing with toy airplanes.

In the next scene, Grant Irvine, one of those boys, is in an airplane race. It is dangerous to refuel in the situation he is in, but he thinks it is more important to win than to be careful.

Several people die as a result of the explosion, including some spectators.

There is an investigation in which TV executive Chris Bannon doesn't tell the truth, and airplane racing is ended for the next four years.

Four years later, there is racing again. And Bannon cares more about ratings than safety. After all, the rebroadcasts of that incident four years earlier got some of the best ratings the NTC network has ever seen.

Grant can't race (or can he? We'll find out), but his brother Kevin (apparently the other boy from the opening credits) can. Grant can be the crew chief. Kevin flew in combat against Albanians, but despite his medals, his brother (who was in Desert Storm) doesn't see that war as worthy of respect. Both brothers appear interested in Trina, the pretty refueling pilot. Diedrich is a tough, competitive German pilot who reminds me of Drago in "Rocky IV".

It's an exciting event watched by millions, and covered by DNN, PGD and MATV as well as NTC. And in this world, ratings information is available immediately. Furthermore, there is plenty of action to generate ratings. Bannon, of course, wants the pilots to be as reckless as possible so that maybe there will be a crash or something.

It's funny to watch the poor people of Vladivostok (or whatever city that really is) reacting to the reckless pilots. I didn't know they had such pretty blonde women there. Hey, who cares, people in the movie say--it's Vladivostok.

There is an amazing moral dilemma which is resolved in a way one might not expect. Perhaps some people here care about others more than winning.

This isn't really my kind of movie, but I couldn't help but find the racing scenes exciting. Before the second race, a lot of scenes explained what was happening or getting ready to happen, but these wouldn't necessarily interest those who came here for action.

I'm no expert, but it certainly looked like people knew what they were doing as they tried to make the action realistic. Those who know planes might have a different opinion. Two major weaknesses: the sound effects people relied heavily on Hanna Barbera (a good thing for someone like me who grew up on those cartoons), and the planes went all the way across Africa and Asia in no time flat, as if they used "Star Trek" worm holes or something. And I doubt medical information was accurate. There's no way someone could recover like that without a hospital and real doctors.

No one watches a movie like this for the acting. I thought Adam Baldwin was particularly weak in some scenes. His character sounded knowledgeable as he did part of the race announcing for NTC, but he was no Jim McKay. He was, of course, an executive, so this may have been all right. But his best moments seemed to be limited to those exciting scenes where something dangerous was likely to generate ratings. He had a great poker face at one point where I thought he was delivering bad news--he wasn't.

It's a B movie. Something exciting to watch if that's your style and you're not picky.

While an interesting movie, it really seemed unfinished. The sound quality and the editing are of the worst I've ever seen in a professional movie. Sometimes during scene changes the original sound is retained during the cuts so it changes volume as the scene changes. There's one really bad noticeable example of this when Chris (Adam Baldwin) is making an announcement and the first part of the scene shows him from the left side, then it cuts to a close up of his face. The audio is extremely different between the two cuts, yet the scene is supposed to be continuous.

Another strange thing about the editing is when they'd "follow" Chris around during the TV broadcasts, but as he would be moving forward, the cuts would be seemly random, from his front, left side, right side, and back. It's hard to explain, but when you watch a person moving forward, the cuts need to progress as if he's moving forward. This movie had him jumping all over the place, it actually gave me a headache.

Other times, really noticeable overdubbing takes place where the voice doesn't even match the movements of the actors mouth. The air-show audience reminded me of an infomercial audience; their energy didn't match what is going on at that time, and their audio cuts in and out abruptly with them, when sometimes the audience audio should have continued into the next scene, fading out over time.

Also, when the two major disasters took place in the air, the audio didn't mirror the "urgency" of the visual. While a disastrous effect is taking place visual, the sound did not raise volume or create urgency -- it took a few moments to realize something bad was happening, because the sound did not give much audio clue to it. I think this alone caused some of the great emotion that could have been attained in this movie to fall completely flat.

And what was with that trailer-trash couple sitting on their couch in the living room that gets cut to during the movie????? My humble opinion is that if you're going to cut to random at-home TV people, at least use a lot of different people so we don't start to think this single at-home TV family is part of the plot.

Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen a movie with such choppy, sloppy, editing, or such bad sound in my entire life. I was shocked as I watched it that a movie could actually be released when it seems it's not even ready.

I liked the story and I liked the actors. It's strange these days to see a movie where the tech is screwed up because normally that's the flawless parts of the movie and it's usually the writing or acting that's bad.

This movie could have been 10 times better if it had better sound or editing! Why didn't the producer fire the editors? That's what I want to know!