Hypersonic (2002 Video) User Reviews

A great plot hole...

[Enchorde · 2/10 · 27 March 2005]

** HERE BE SPOILERS **

Recap: Transcon with Christopher Bannon (Baldwin) at the helm is the corporation in charge of the Air Races, which is exactly what it sounds like, a race with jet (fighter) planes. During a race Grant Irvine (Sabato Jr) is involved in an accident while refueling. His tanker plane goes up in flamer and his brother Kevin (Sutton) barely makes it out. A few fellow pilots and some spectators are not so fortunate, they are killed. An investigation bans Bannon from arranging Air Races and Grant's license is revoked. Four years later, the ban is lifted and Grant is recruited to work as crew chief aboard the tanker, while his brother Kevin will race...

Comments: The entire story is one giant plot hole. It is easy to predict and not in any way consistent. Rules of the race are suddenly made up just to legitimize some twist everyone has seen coming a mile away, even if that rule completely contradicts the earlier story. The geographic errors are huge. In one stage they are supposed to go from Buenos Aires to Paris. When trouble arise the closest airfield is in Sri Lanka! Other stages of the races are (thankfully) ignored completely without even telling the viewer, it is impossible to know where the pilots are. Other long stretches that are shown are dull and boring, while crucial information and development is ignored and just told the viewer through commentary. The jets is never more than 10 feet from each other and frequently bump into each other, mostly without any effect. Even if two jets leave the group and fly a detour through a city they will still be in the lead when rejoining the group. Some stunts the pilots do actually had me thinking of Hot Shots, but while that was a comedy, this is trying to be a realistic action. What I'm trying to say is that the story is mostly boring, incomprehensible and full of obvious errors. In addition all jets are computer generated, and mostly poorly so, even while stationary on the ground. In conclusion, there are no reasons to see this movie, and lots of them to avoid it...

2/10

I love crappy movies!

[fred-733 · 4/10 · 19 June 2006]

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.

Hilarious

[TheBeardedWonder · 3/10 · 3 September 2022]

Check this out if you like movies that are so bad they're good. If you watch it with that in mind, it's pretty funny and will crack you up. It's got awful cgi, wailing guitar where it doesn't belong, a weird plot about race jet drivers (?), bad actors delivering words they've clearly never said in their lives, and Johnny Lawrence from cobra kai.

It almost gives off death race 2000 vibes (but without the political allegories) even though there's not much violence or death, so if you're a fan that one check this out. I don't think will become a midnight movie classic or anything, but if you find the dvd for $1 like I did, pick it up and have a blast with others who would appreciate such a POS!

The most awful movie of my life!

[manifold78 · 1/10 · 17 May 2003]

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!

Who gives this rotgut a 10?

[Asteri-Atypical · 1/10 · 4 June 2005]

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).

It's a black hole; it just sucked that bad.

[Falcon4 · 1/10 · 3 August 2003]

(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*

Abysmal

[SFBayHooligan · 1/10 · 24 June 2006]

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!

Um.... What?

[draketigerclaw · 1/10 · 2 August 2010]

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 great candidate for a list "Worst movies in history"

[krs-8 · 1/10 · 15 December 2009]

It didn't even take 10 wasted minutes of my life to discover this hideous excuse for a film is less entertaining than watching paint dry. Perhaps to a totally stoned 4th grader it would be marginally interesting but then so would a trail of ants on the floor. No part of this debacle is even close to real or realistic. But I sure would like to get some of those binoculars that let people watch every part of an intercontinental air race. It never ceases to amaze me that movie makers who want to have airplanes in their film only rarely manage to dig up an actual pilot, or engineer or SOMEONE who isn't a total doofus, for technical advise. Another hard to believe fact is that they have the nerve to charge admission to crap like this. Boo, hiss.

Really bad sound & editing

[greglosang · 9 June 2003]

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!

Moral Luck Makes Sabato The "Hero"

[belles-chaussettes · 2/10 · 27 October 2019]

This movie gets an extra star for Adam Baldwin in a suit. Hero pilot, evil executives, brothers, team rivalry after a disaster, and moral luck make for a I've got the flu and no energy for the remote movie. The ending makes no sense with Sabato endangering thousands of lives to save the pilot of a rival team. Yeah. Bad exec gets his from the Russian mob. I'm still trying to scrub the bad Air Force uniforms from my memory.

Way better than expected!

[task571 · 6/10 · 3 July 2005]

This is not a big summer blockbuster with $100's of millions for its budget. However, when I saw this movie at my local video store, I decided to rent it (had nothing better to do on a Saturday night). I put it in the DVD player and was ready to fall asleep on the couch watching it. I was really surprised that I actually found myself getting into it. The CGI is nowhere near Industrial Light and Magic level, but not really that bad. The story is good, the acting was way better than I expected, Yeah it is a low-budget film, but as long as you go in not expecting a highly technical film, I thought this film was fun. I even went as far as to purchase this film. Adam Baldwin's character was good... I really wanted him to die a very horrible and slow death, and you know what they say... If you find yourself hating the villain in the film, then he did a good job as an actor! Rent this movie just for fun, like I did... You just may be surprised like I was...

Exciting when the planes were in the air

[vchimpanzee · 30 June 2008]

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.