Visually, this documentary is exactly what you'd expect, sleek shots of jets cutting through the sky, dramatic slow-motion, swelling music, and pilots framed as modern-day superheroes. As an aviation fan who goes every year to the BIAS Air Show in Bucharest, I enjoyed the flying sequences. The Thunderbirds are undoubtedly impressive, and the production knows how to showcase their precision.
But here's the thing: this is less documentary, more recruitment commercial. Every other line is a recycled slogan, "the best in the world", "the greatest pilots alive", "the elite of the world", rinse and repeat. Be f for real. And from an international perspective, it gets tiring. I've been to America, I know the culture, and I get that patriotism is a big part of it. But at times, the film feels like the U. S. is the only country on the planet, as if aviation elsewhere doesn't even exist. Spoiler: it does.
Don't get me wrong, I can enjoy a good patriotic production. But when the narrative drowns in marketing language, it stops being insightful and becomes plain self-congratulation. Instead of digging into the human side of the Thunderbirds, the training, the pressure, the sacrifices, we get an endless loop of "Yay, America is number one!" Which is fine... if that's all you came for.
So yes, I had fun watching it. The jets look incredible, the editing is polished, and as pure spectacle, it works. But if you want depth, perspective, or even the faintest acknowledgment that the world is bigger than one country, you won't find it here. It's a glossy brochure with wings, and nothing more.
