I love this movie so much

Such a frustrating disappointment

Fresh and Exciting

Excellent adaptation.

It helps a bit to understand this movie if you know it is a Russian / US joint venture. This explains the Russian and US filming locations and cast. It's entertaining if not fully comprehensible.Fighter airplane buffs will enjoy the multitude of planes on display. The aerial combat is quite exciting and not that difficult to figure out who is who when they remove the mouth piece of the helmets.It's not Top Gun at all. The surprisingly current and complicated story involves some Saddam weapon called the Rainmaker. A bunch of young hot shot pilots (kudos to makeup for making them look younger) are set up in a friendly fire incident and sacked. Then 7 years later some of them are recruited to destroy the weapon in Iran with Russian assistance. It gets a bit confusing then but the action is exciting including some over the top shoot outs at airbases. The multi national production does not look cheap even though there is a slightly amateurish vibe throughout. Hard to figure out at first who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.The cast is a bit better than the story. Cam Gigandet of Twilight and Troy Garity are the good guys. Mario Van Peebles is the villain. Shane West of Nikita is the good guy turned bad. Nice to see Rachel Leigh Cook on screen again and speaking Russian no less.Overall a B movie can be entertaining even if you don't always know what is going on.

The plot I believe is the result of something hastily slapped together,for a direct to video release. It contains a bunch of people who can't act to save their life.Aside from Bill Pullman who must be really in need of money,and look very out of place. You have the usual stereotype character the good looking cool guy.Who fly fighter planes just wearing a leather jacket and a helmet. the not so good looking and so on.They have stolen a bit from other airplane movies.I Recognize a few scenes here and there,borrowed from movies in the 80 and 90s.Like a good portion of the storyline. I can clearly see stuff like Iron eagle,flight of the intruder,and a dozen others Some of the plane scenes are clearly computer animated.Quite badly too. Others are just hilariously bad filmed. When they fly low over the rooftops in Moscow, underneath a grey and overcast sky.Yet every inside shot from the cockpit show they are above the clouds, with clouds underneath a clear blue sky above.Lest not forget the constant re-shot they use.I could count at least 3- 4 scenes that were being reused in the filmMario Van peebles are not believable as a CIA agent.You actually start laughing at him, cause he's o out of place.It look like he's been picked up from a bad 80 action flick. And the all over acting leaves a lot to be desired. Rachael Leigh cook look like she have no idea what her part is suppose to bring to the movie,in mostly every scene that's not one on one,she look lost,and totally clueless of why she's there

"New Jack City" director Mario Van Peebles' straight-to-video feature "Red Sky" concerns a quartet of "Top Gun" style U.S. Navy aviators during the Iraq war that receive orders to blast a suspicious Iraqi chemical weapons facility with their missiles. An unknown individual known only as "Warlord 2" (Mario Van Peebles) transmits those orders. Later, to their horror, our heroes learn that they had fired on friendly American inspectors searching the site for a weapon of mass destruction—a Rainmaker—designed by Saddam to destroy oilfields. The fliers—'Cobra' (Cam Gigandet of "Twilight"), 'Cajun' (Troy Garity of "Sabotage"), 'Rodeo' (Shane West of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen") and 'P-Dawg' (Jacob Vargas) cannot prove that they received authenticated attack orders. Similarly, the JAG officer in charge of the prosecution, Captain John Webster (Bill Pullman of "Independence Day"), cannot produce the tapes that would convict this foursome. This stalemate prompts our heroes to leave the Navy. Afterward, Rodeo and his fiancée, Karen Brooks (Rachel Leigh Cook of "Josie and the Pussycats") break up when he objects to the intimate way she treats Cobra in a bar. Afterward, our heroes go back into the private sector. Meantime, Kurdish rebels associated with "Warlord 2" appropriate the Rainmaker. The Pentagon believes that our heroes obliterated the 'Rainmaker' when they fired on the plant. Seven years elapses and three of them grow suspicious about one of them. Meanwhile, Tom Craig's former fiancée has become a respected journalist who is ferreting out information about the debacle in the former Soviet Union. Intelligence agents grille Cobra about his role in the botched mission, but he refuses to tell them anything other than what he told the court. Captain Webster is beginning to have suspicions about Cobra. Webster serves in the Pentagon now. He approaches Cobra about an audacious plan to fly into Iran to destroy the Rainmaker in a "strictly off the books" secret mission where they will be flying jets with Iranian colors. Webster offers Cobra and his comrades the opportunity to clear their names and receive honorable Navy discharges. We also learn that during the seven years after the debacle, Cobra has been slipping money to the Marine's widow. Anyway, Cobra and his men decide to take Webster up on his offer. They learn that they will have to perform a HALO insertion into Iran, steal the planes, and equip them with special bombs to destroy the Rainmaker. Of course, it should come as no surprise that our heroes are double-crossed after they HALO into Iran and land in a prison. Mario Van Peebles generates minimal urgency in this complicated aerial combat opus based on retired Navy pilot Randy Arrington's novel "Kerosene Cowboys: Manning the Spare." The intriguing premise and the first 40 minutes create no surprises, and the characters have no depth beyond surface appearances. None of the leads engender any charisma, especially Cam Gigandet, and Gigandet has done better things with greater personality. "Red Sky" has all the hallmarks of a straight-to-video release. It is too matter of fact despite its above-average, overqualified cast. Confined to a colorless role, Bill Pullman appears either out of place or just too old to be useful as a lead. Rachel Leigh Cook is pretty dull, too, as an investigative journalist. The two treacherous villains are hopelessly lackluster, too, until three-fourths of the action has taken place. One of them vanishes early and the other has everybody completely fooled everybody about his identity. Altogether, "Red Sky" isn't a total loss. Peebles jacks up the action after our heroes escape from the prison and perform their mission. Their far-fetched escape from an Iranian airfield imitates "Tomorrow Never Dies" when Cobra using a jet to mow down Iranian soldiers. The biggest surprise comes just after our heroes get airborne and they take out the opposition. Happily, Peebles paints the heroes into a dramatic corner. The best action occurs in the final quarter-hour, but it is too late to salvage this formulaic fodder.

Overall not a bad movie.. but it was lacking. Better than the pathetic cheeze of Iron Eagle (or it's pathetic added on clones)Don't expect "Top Gun" quality of production and it can be interesting. However don't expect Plan 9 either.Some decent actors.. but poor direction from MVP whom can't direct or act his way out of a wet paper bag.That said.. at least it's not another steaming pile of sh*t from Ewe Boll! (Some moron(s) somewhere keep giving that putz $ to make movies and he creates nothing but total crap.. worst director ever)As for aircraft.. a decent display of older Mig-29's mostly which is not as common for an American movie. Too bad they did not have a real director instead of MVP... perhaps with someone with actual directing skill this could have been a better production.