SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

bobbyp1966 Brad Randolph (Carradine) has a lot on his life's plate: he flies aerobatics, is mentoring a protégé in aerobatics and trying to keep him away from air drug-smuggling, has a girlfriend who wants a committed relationship but fears an offspring would be afflicted by the same defective gene which affects his brother, who he loves a great deal. To top it off, he's affected by blackouts which put him at risk in the air, but he flies anyway. Brad comes under further pressure when his girlfriend turns up pregnant, and more so when he comes to the rescue of his protégé, pitting himself and a T-tail Piper Lance against a P-51 Mustang flown by a smuggler in a rather spectacular aerial scene. By the time the dust settles, Brad is ready to compete in an airshow and comes to grips with his worries and his life when he's spared in a plane accident and he meets his new child. Of course, at the end, everything's gonna be alright.Not a bad film, really. It's good to see Carradine in a role other than Kwai Chang Caine.

Checkboard I was an aerobatic instructor in the late 80's and this was my favourite film. That sounds like an inane statement - but when a pilot can tell you they like a film about flying, then you have some idea that the life of flying and the flying itself has been captured with a sympathy which is very rare in flying movies.The drug-running side plot is a shame, as it detracts from the main plot - when it would have been so easy to script enough drama to fill the movie. Filming is without blue screen, many of the pilots are depicted by serious aerobatic flyers of the time, and David Carradine does a very good job.I even like the music.

tubbm I must have seen this film about 100 times. My dad, Terry Tubb, and my grandfather, Walt Tubb were in this film. My dad and grandfather were aerobatics pilots back in the 70's before I was born. My grandfather played one of the judges and also did some of the aerobatics routines in his 'mythical pitts' and my father does a lot of the flying in his pitts special. The thing that most people don't know is that when they filmed Brad's older friend 'walt"'s plane crash scene where he dies, my grandfather Walt Tubb, flew that sequence in his airplane to make it look like he was spinning out of control and falling towards the earth. My grandfather said he got a weird feeling after filming this scene. He died shortly after the film wrapped flying in an airshow where he crashed the very plane he did a 'pretend' crash sequence for. He died before both I was born. I never knew him, and as a young child when I watched this movie, I thought I was watching my grandfather die. It wasn't until I was older that I understood what it really meant.

Kenny-36 The plot's a little thin in this film. It deals with competition aerobatics and the main character's unwillingness to be in a long term relationship for fear of passing on a defective gene to future children. The side plot is teaching a rising aerobatic pilot the tricks of aerobatics while teaching him to live by clean living and giving up trafficing in drugs. Even with the thin plot the aerobatics and filming were good and this was a very entertaining and well done film.