Contains classic, beautiful air-to-air photography at high speed, in clear air and often at magic hour. The linear, obvious and juvenile screenplay was a classic of what high school story writers try to accomplish: Underdog struggles against all odds and eventually triumphs and gets the girl in the bargain. The fundamental question is: Assuming the problem was trying to work to a very low budget, could the company have done better than produce this truly awful picture? Given a child-like screenplay with no human insight evident, the answer is "no." But, given that the screenplay could have been tweaked to replace the cardboard characters with real humans, even with that change there were many other impairments to the success of this film. Other low-budget drama films win awards ("Glengarry Glen Ross," "Old Boy," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," "Reservoir Dogs" and thousands of others). My viewing experience was that the film was not entertaining (an artifact of the infantile story line), very poorly cast or cast hastily and without an ability to audition well, replete with unrealistic dialog (another script problem), some decent acting mixed in with really awful acting, and the most odd hodge-podge ("hotch-potch" as we would say in Yorkshire) of photography and lighting that I have seen outside of no- budget amateur short films. Like another reviewer, I too found that I had to watch this picture in two-minute segments because it was so awful in almost every dimension. The fundamental expectation for a feature film is that the talent will be able to realistically play against one another without obviously reading a mental teleprompter while so doing. Alas, that was not the case here. With a perceptive screenwriter who understands the human condition and some creativity, it might be possible to construct a less-obvious story that would hold the interest of the audience. Then, with a professional casting director, talented director, and professional lighting cinematographer, I could foresee building a project around the beauty of flight from the Reno Air Races coupled with a great story, and it might be possible to produce the next "Top Gun."
My associates are using this picture as one of a number of examples of poor film-making. That is the silver-lining: Every error is a chance to learn and get better.
Finally, I did not appreciate someone, who worked on this picture, reviewing it and giving a score of "9," and then putting in a list of excuses within the review itself. That is a direct conflict of interest.
My associates are using this picture as one of a number of examples of poor film-making. That is the silver-lining: Every error is a chance to learn and get better.
Finally, I did not appreciate someone, who worked on this picture, reviewing it and giving a score of "9," and then putting in a list of excuses within the review itself. That is a direct conflict of interest.
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