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Born To Fly Review



Born To Fly, a high-octane pep rally for China's air force, is dubbed “the Chinese Top Gun”.To get more news about born to fly, you can visit shine news official website.

It has fighter planes, dogfights, hotshot pilots with a need for speed and a bone to pick with one another, wise old hands, and of course, patriotic chest-beating.Nothing to do with the jingoistic lines — “The sky and the land belongs to China”, “I want to perfect our fighter planes to get them to the frontline for revenge”. Any scriptwriter in a parallel universe can turn those quips into Hollywood ones.

It’s just that this pic isn’t sexy or fun enough. No super-cool motorbike, no bomber jacket, no rock songs, no boozy wild time, nor an uncontrollable urge to merge, ala Cruise and Kelly McGillis in Top Gun.

Despite the ace flyboy here, Lei Yu (South Korean-Chinese boyband Uniq’s Wang Yibo), and his gal, military doctor Shen Tianran (Better Days’ Zhou Dongyu), looking dovey-lovey at each other with the discipline of a monk.

One rip-off survives. Debut director/co-writer Liu Xiaoshi, who made promo films for the Chinese military, inserts that pen-twirling bit from 1986 which Val Kilmer's Iceman used to taunt his rival, Cruise’s Maverick. Blink and you'll miss this as Lei — call-signed “Shuke” (after an animation mouse-pilot) — and his chief rival, Deng Fang (Yu Shi) — “Eagle” — share some silly beef over a salute.
The main thing is this. Story-wise, both flicks — East and West versions — are as different as chalk and cheese. Actually, as different as America’s Top Gun is from China’s Golden Helmet, the award the best pilots win here.

Here’s the deal. Born To Fly, a tribute to dogged determination and selfless sacrifice, is basically about 10 speeds slower and less thrilling than both Top Guns. This show’s release was apparently delayed last year to improve its special effects. But it still can't match Top Gun’s massive adrenalin rush.

Primarily since, unlike the cocky, triumphant spin of Top Gun, it’s more about spills than thrills. This pic zooms in not on exciting aerial combat, but on elite test pilots overcoming, quite boringly, test flight after test flight, the multiple failures that lead to the launch of China's first stealth fighter, the Chengdu J-20.

It’s an urgent situation that frustrates everybody from airmen to scientists to even the parachute packer. “The first battle is the final battle,” goes the motivation to keep up the collective spirit.
In Top Gun, the individualistic jocks play volleyball at the beach in flashy slo-mo. Over here, the socially-attuned boys visit graves to pay private respect to aviation martyrs who fell because of inferior, national-humiliation equipment. Their night out is a wholesome trip to their commander's home for dinner at a big communal table to hear about how hard the old times were.

I tell you, it’s simply fascinating to peek behind the bamboo curtain for China’s POV here. More ominously, this looks like the PRC’s movie-cum-foreign-policy-statement regarding how the whole techno game is going to change from now on.

Because Born To Fly is a serious, solemn and expectedly nationalistic film about a deliberately hamstrung air force lagging in outmatched warplanes that are one vital generation behind foreign adversaries.

Due to a technological blockade imposed by Western powers — it's a real thing — China’s military is left severely handicapped as it develops everything in-house all on its own. It needs to catch up with cutting-edge tech asap with its test pilots taking deadly risks to gather “limit data” as they push their jet engines to unknown levels.