Red Sky Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.0

Red Sky Blu-ray Movie Review

New Jack Kurdistan

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 19, 2015

Nino Brown is alive and well and living in . . . the CIA? The charismatic drug lord who bestrode director Mario Van Peebles' debut feature New Jack City famously proclaimed: "This is big business! This is the American way!" The arch-villain of Van Peebles' latest feature, the straight-to-video Red Sky, has a more global perspective. Played by Van Peebles himself, the smooth-talking fiend has a plot involving misdirected air strikes, chemical weapons, stock market manipulations, geopolitics and oil fields, and he manages to keep everyone in the dark about his intentions throughout the film's running time, while a bewildering number of incidental players scramble across several continents, always several steps behind the bad guy (or standing right next to him, utterly clueless).

Unfortunately, Van Peebles the director and co-writer often confuses his role with that of Van Peebles the villain—he keeps the audience as much in the dark as the good guys. Thrillers go slack unless the viewer understands enough to grasp the danger facing the heroes, and Van Peebles is so busy jumping among locations and shuffling characters on and off the screen that he forgets the essentials of clear exposition. In comparison to Red Sky, Michael Bay looks like a master of clarity.

Red Sky is a joint Russian/American production based on the novel Kerosene Cowboys: Manning the Spare by retired Navy pilot Randy Arrington. Van Peebles co-wrote the script from a story by David Riggs and Russian producer Nikolay Suslov, founders of Svarog-Afterburner Films, Inc., which had ambitious plans that are now uncertain following the tragic death of Riggs in an airplane crash in 2013.

Key elements of Red Sky echo Top Gun, especially the many (too many) pilots and navigators with their catchy call signs and the concluding aerial battle, the occasion of which is just as vague as in the Tom Cruise classic. (Then again, who cares, as long as the planes look cool?) The film opens during the Iraq war, when two top pilots, Butch "Cobra" Masters (Cam Gigandet) and Tom "Rodeo" Craig (Shane West), are ordered to take out a suspected Iraqi chemical weapons facility by a spotter identified only as "Warlord Two". Butch fires and destroys the target, but in fact it is currently occupied by inspectors, who have just uncovered a rumored and long-sought-after bio-chemical device known as "Rainmaker", of which no one knows the purpose or effect. The inspectors narrowly escape, but a U.S. soldier escorting them is killed. Rainmaker is presumed destroyed in the attack, but in fact it has been smuggled out of the facility at the last minute by Kurdish rebels allied with "Warlord Two" (who only the audience knows is Van Peebles, a CIA agent named Jason Cutter).

Butch, Tom and their two navigators—Luke "Cajun" Babbineaux (Troy Garity) and Jorge "P-Dawg" Vasquez (Jacob Vargas)—are court-martialed and offered a plea bargain in which they resign their commissions in disgrace. At the same time, Tom breaks off his engagement with his fiancée, Karen Brooks (Rachel Leigh Cook), claiming that she really loves Butch, which certainly appears to be true (and vice versa).

Seven years later, Karen has graduated from bar maid at a pilots' hangout in Nevada to investigative journalist, in one of Red Sky's many unexplained leaps. She and Butch haven't seen each other, because he's largely dropped out of sight, living in a converted fuselage, working as a grease monkey, painting pictures and trying to arrange a deal to buy Russian MIGs so that he can start a business providing "opponents" to Navy pilots in training. Meanwhile, Tom runs a successful flight school that employs both Cajun and P-Dawg—which is all well and good until he disappears just before federal agents come looking for him.

The renewed interest in the former flight squad results from intelligence reports of a possible terrorist plot to shift the world's balance of power by destroying the rich oil fields in Iran (or possibly elsewhere; the script is unclear). This, apparently, is the true function of Rainmaker: to deploy a bacteria that "eats" crude oil in the ground, rendering it inert and useless. The latest intelligence places Rainmaker in Iran being readied for deployment. At a high-level Pentagon meeting, Captain John Webster (Bill Pullman), who also happens to have been the prosecuting attorney at the court-martial of Butch et al., recommends a covert air strike to eliminate the threat, but his plan is rejected as too risky. Also present at the meeting is CIA Agent Cutter a/k/a Warlord Two.

Unconcerned about official approval, the Captain seeks out Butch, Cajun and P-Dawg to offer them a deal: Their records will be cleared, if they will accept an off-the-books mission to enter Iranian air space and destroy Rainmaker. Obviously, if anything goes wrong, they are on their own, Mission: Impossible-style. For reasons that have something to do with international cooperation (not to mention film financing), the covert mission requires the participation of a Russian pilot named Anna Zhukova (Mariya Guzeeva).

To say that nothing goes right with the Captain's plan would be an understatement, especially since he uses the CIA for intel, which gives "Warlord Two" every opportunity to twist the operation to his advantage. It all has something to do with an obscure investment made many years ago but frankly, by this point, it's unlikely that anyone will still even be trying to follow the plot of Red Sky. Genre conventions dictate that Butch and Tom will eventually meet and have a showdown in the air, and they do. The intelligence community must have grossly underestimated the threat from Rainmaker, and they have. Warlord Two must eventually be unmasked, and he is. His nefarious plan (whatever it is) must eventually fail, and it does.

Red Sky would be much more entertaining if one could easily follow how and why all this happens, but Van Peebles, in his first foray into formula action thrillers, can't shake his usual habit of overstuffing films with plot and incident, which is exactly what action pictures cannot bear unless the director is extraordinarily disciplined. The best such films thrive on efficient, tidy exposition with characters whose function is apparent from the moment they appear onscreen. When a film about naval air crew starts introducing new ones and flashing their call signs on the screen halfway through, and that's pretty much all you learn about them, it's a sure sign that the script needed several more passes. There may be an intriguing espionage plot buried somewhere inside Red Sky's profusion of gunshots, explosions, aerial acrobatics and glowering feds, but I'd trade it all for one good scene with Nino Brown. When he threatened someone, at least you knew what he wanted.

Red Sky Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Specific information about the shooting format of Red Sky was not available, but judging from appearances, the film was probably shot digitally. The credits indicate that post-production was completed on a digital intermediate, so that Inception Media's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably derived directly from a digital source. The credited cinematographer is Ronald Hersey, who has extensive experience as an aerial and second unit DP on major studio films such as Ender's Game and White House Down.

Much of Red Sky's visual style was no doubt dictated by the CG work needed to achieve the flying sequences. In general, though, the image is reasonably sharp and detailed, with a palette that tends to be either very bright or exceptionally dark (as in, e.g., the high level defense meeting), probably to help conceal the lack of budget for extensive set design. The colors are generally realistic on the ground and slightly pale in the air, with the blues of the sky notably light, but this appears to be by design. Fleshtones look accurate, and the orange fireballs of multiple explosions look like classic movie pyrotechnics. The blacks in caves and bunkers look accurate, although there is some indication of overbrightening in some of the nighttime scenes, e.g., in St. Petersburg. Here again, this may simply reflect the source.

Inception has mastered the 108-minute film with an average bitrate of 20.00 Mbps, which is adequate for digitally originated material, though less than optimal for a film with so many high-octane action sequences. Still, artifacts did not appear to be an issue.

Red Sky Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

In what I believe is a first for Inception Media, Red Sky arrives on Blu-ray with a lossless audio track, specifically Dolby TrueHD 5.1. Van Peebles has always been fond of aggressive sound mixes, and Red Sky is no exception. Flyovers, aerial combat (simulated and otherwise), gunfire, heavy artillery and explosions of all kinds feature prominently on the film's soundtrack, and the lossless track delivers them forcefully with punch and deep bass extension. Probably due to budget constraints, the surround channels aren't used as aggressively as they might have been to immerse the viewer in the battle, but what's here is certainly involving enough. Dialogue is clear, and the score by Tim Williams (a frequent orchestrator for major films) is suitably heroic.

Red Sky Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Music Video (1080p; 1.78:1; 4:23): Mandela and Morgana Van Peebles star in a music video "inspired" by Red Sky. The song is "Red Anthem", which is heard over the opening and closing credits.



• Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 1:32): The promotional hook is that several of Red Sky's producers also produced Machete Kills and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. Take that for what it's worth.



• Additional Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers for Pathfinders: In the Company of Strangers, Deserter and My Own Love Song, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Red Sky Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As any reader can tell from my reviews of New Jack City, Posse, All Things Fall Apart and We the Party, I am a fan of Mario Van Peebles as a director and always willing to give him the benefit of the doubt as he explores new directions in cinema. But in Red Sky, he is treading a path that is well-worn and clearly marked. If one sets out to do a genre exercise, the first requirement is to master the genre's essential mechanics. Only then can you start reinventing them. Red Sky fails this basic test and is, therefore, not recommended.