Best movie of this year hands down!

Overrated

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Doug "Thumper" Masters and Matt "Cobra" Cooper stray into Soviet airspace. Thumper gets antsy and Soviet pilot Yuri Lebanov (Colm Feore) kills him. The incident is covered up by both governments. A nuclear weapon is being tested by a middle east nation. A secret joint Soviet-American-Israeli operation is planned to stop it. Charles "Chappy" Sinclair (Louis Gossett Jr.) is recruited out of retirement.I don't get why Thumper is killed right off the bat. I guess that Jason Gedrick is too busy and could only fit an one day shoot. The whole idea of a team of kids fighting back as underdogs is the backbone of the original movie. The whole raison d'être of the franchise has been ejected by this sequel. None of the kids are back. This is a Chappy sequel and he's only a small part of an ensemble. It's still a low grade Top Gun. It's like watching a pig wallowing in mud. One can't expect more. This is a porker.

Let's get down to briefing. This mission would see director / writer Sidney J. Furie returning after the success that was "Iron Eagle" to provide us with the franchise's first sequel. "Iron Eagle II" would also see Charles "Chappy" Sinclair (with Louis Gossett Jr. reprising the role) getting some more screen time, but as for Doug Masters (again by Jason Gedrick) it's not so the case. It's no real biggie… as this trivial sequel was nothing more than predictably bland, unfunny and tepid follow up with little in the way of excitement. Too bad that's so, as it starts off decent enough and actually has a surprising plot device (which is later wasted in the feature) before it nose dives. The first time I tried to watch it, I fell asleep. Some cracking aircraft action sequences aside, the story was limpidly told and the performances fairly uninteresting (led by Mark Humphrey) with its odd assortment pilots / soldiers (Americans and Russians) trying to come to terms with each other so they can complete a proposed assignment. The script offers up the same-old, pushy patterns; conflict, tragedy, love, pride and payback. A team is chosen, a mismatch group destined to fail (which their generals would like to see), but they prove them wrong by training hard and working together to achieve their goal of destroying a nuclear weapon facility. This actual threat is kept rather vague with the focus more so on what's happening inside the ranks of this mission. The back-end does offer up some rough and ready action, but quite customary. Making an amusing appearance is the always dependable Maury Chaykin as one of the recruits. Textbook, but lacklustre comic action.

. . .and you can't accuse it of being a "Top Gun" ripoff. But this one? No excuses! It is! Especially when you got one of the characters trying to carry himself like the Maverick character in Top Gun.I can see why the U. S. Air Force wouldn't lend a hand and its jets (again) for this one.

The first film was so-so, and the sequel is rock-bottom. Never mind the fact that they try to pass F-4 Phantoms for MiGs (and MiG-29s at that!), it's the entire idea that the US and Soviet would cooperate in a military operation to knock out a nuclear missile plant (and what the hell is THAT if I may ask?) in an arab country. The Soviet Union would probably have struck back at the US for doing it...This film sucks.