Hyper Sonic (2002)

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.

The plot, special effects, and any similarity to current day USAF capabilities & operations was so far off-base that I didn't even notice the poor editing job that they previous reviewer mentioned.I only suffered through the first half-hour of the movie before I had to put myself out of my misery & turn off the TV.Clearly this was a low-budget movie, and not only did the USAF/DOD run away from any agreement to provide a liaison for basic technical accuracy, but the producer apparently didn't bother to have ANY adviser for military 'culture' or aviation matters.They couldn't even track down some surplus fighter pilot helmets & oxygen mask assemblies -- what they depicted as O2 masks were actually some modified SCUBA diver breathing regulators!

(2008 edit: Try to keep in mind, while reading, that I was 16 when I wrote this.)I don't even know where to start. They slapped an F-16 Fighting Falcon patch on the guy's jacket, and yet an F-16 was never even shown in the flick. Of course, all the fake jets they used tried to *look* like F-16s - if they didn't have two engines. The oxygen masks they used looked like gas masks. Not only is the air THIN up there... it's TOXIC too! Wow, how futuristic. It's also impossible to fly they way they were. Ugh... wow, this movie is a black hole, a straw, a pump, a jet INTAKE, or (insert name of something that sucks worse here).That's not even talking about the horrid job they did with the audio and the "Infomercial" audience who, during one scene, mysteriously broke into astounding applause for no apparent reason. The slo-mo was there, the music was there... but why? Where's the situation?Speaking of slo-mo... uh... mind telling me WHY there was so much slo-mo? It's like "Woow, dude, this guy's, like... flying...".They also left the script hanging like a bunch of loose threads. During the second air refueling scene in the storm, they completely left out how the REST of the refuelings went. One went bad, they made a big deal over that, and never told us how the rest went. Last time I checked, they were running out of fuel with no other options, and...uh... so how did the rest get fuel? *sigh*I just can't stop thinking about why they bought that F-16 patch off eBay and yet never even used an F-16. Heck, they never even MENTIONED F-16s to give them credit in this movie. Also, there was another real-life fighter (what, an F-15 or F-18?) on the front cover... yet... not in the movie. All fake, computer-generated jets. I bet the writers went to, like, a Russian air force base, saw the "For Rent!" signs in the windows of the fighters, and said "Wow, a script idea!" :-)Then... oh jeez... that little part with the knocked-out pilot. Somehow or another, there's a Matrix-like vitals monitor (which use PUMPS as visuals for breathing...) - as if this were VR or something, and it says "Oh Man! This Dude's Dying!". They "dock" this jet inside the refueling plane, pull out the pilot, and do all this stuff to him, including sticking him, like a sword, with a gigantic syringe or something ("HEE-YA!"). That whole scene lost me. Oh well, onward.The ending? 4 pilots are already dead. Two are left to battle it out, and one of them goes down (not the hero of the movie, noooo). The hero of the movie thinks "oh no i couldn't possibly win this because my only competition's engine blew up! NOOO! I have GOT to eject a perfectly good plane, forfeit 25 MILLION bucks, and save one of the 5 pilots who went down! WOO!".... What were these writers thinking?! *sigh*This movie is my new official "Bad" benchmark.Well, gotta give the writers and director kudos for effort... *heh*

This is the first time writing here in IMDB. Reason: The movie has been the most awful I've ever seen. All flight scenes are done by computer and none of them are even close to photo realistic. I thought that at least the planes shown on the ground are real, but no! The director doesn't know anything 'bout flying and the flight scenes has nothing to do with real aviation (I personally have a pilot licence - so I do know something). I'm personally a big fan of aviation movies but this one is the biggest flop ever!