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The point of the film is to present us with a perfect society where people live in harmony, but a phallocratic one, with the women doing the cooking and cleaning and the husbands working, in the style of life in 50s North America. This "community" is clustered in a desert. The husbands go out every morning at the same time, each with a car, to work in the same place, in something like a research center. This is the film's initial argument.

It becomes clear that this phallocratically perfect world, full of beautiful colors and clothes, may not be completely perfect. It may be artificially perfect. Small touches are sprinkled throughout the first half of the film.

Chris Pine is the leader of this community, of this sect one might say. The film is not perfect and lacks originality in its script. And it could be darker, blacker, more perverse. We understand that this community represents a perfect vision of life by those who have built it; the ideals it embodies are quite meager, quite restricted, to give life to a narrow community. We'll find out why in the film. Perhaps that's the point of the film: to show us the family and feminine ideals of American men.

What's more, the screenwriter and director didn't invite the religion component into this perfect world, believing in gods, the referential book (the Bible, for example). In the end, the god is the community leader, Chris Pine.

Olivia Wilde and her screenwriter Katie Silberman have done a fine job, even if the film is not without length once we've understood what it's all about, and could have been sped up (the two-hour running time is excessive for such a subject).

When faced with a product like this, it's hard to resist. The script and dramatic arc are hyper-classical. Almost bordering on the ridiculous, such as Tom Cruise's relationship with Jennifer Connelly, stitched together with no dramatic stakes. It's all artificial, even parodic.

Another very classic element is the small group of chosen ones who train and live together for a dangerous mission. All this in a hyper-classic, predictable progression, with no real suspense. The film's framework of a group assembled for a mission is respected to the letter. We're left to guess which of the group won't return from the mission, but that's not much of a dramatic challenge.

On the other hand, the only thing that makes the film worth watching is its innovative images, and their spectacular content during the flights. In terms of form, the change of ratio from say 2.35 for the transitional scenes, dialogues and everyday life to 1.85 for the sequences in the fighter plane, is highly effective and spectacular, and creates elements of immersion. In terms of kinetics, movement and the energy produced by the change of format, the film makes its mark and does the job, showing things never before seen, notably the effect of the Gs on the pilots, which it would seem is real. This was one of the objectives of the film's creators: that the actors really fly and that the spectator perceives the pilots' sensations. And they succeeded.