I'm an avid fan of military aviation movies. Sadly, there are no many movies of this genre nowadays and those that qualifies, although fun, don't have real aerial photography and are all done by computers. Take "Stealth" as an example.

To me the last movies that I saw with good and real aerial action sequences were Final Countdown, Winged Devils (Italian o.t. Forza G) and maybe Top Gun in a very distant 3rd place.

Then I saw a trailer of this french movie "Les Chevaliers du Ciel".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421974/

http://www.leschevaliers-lefilm.com/site/intro.html


Looking at the trailer, the plot doesn't look that good but the aerial fight sequences looks awsome and better than that, REAL!!!.

Does anybody know if this movie will be available on DVD (region 1)?

Any comments about the movie?


Please mention any other NON-HOLLYWOOD movie of that genre that you know.

Check also my previous related thread:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=606388

Ok I found more info on the movie:

Directed by : Gérard Pirès
With : Benoît Magimel, Clovis Cornillac, Géraldine Pailhas, Alice Taglioni, Philippe Torreton, Jean-Baptiste Puech, Christophe Reymond, Fiona Curzon, Jean-Michel Tinivelli, Frédéric Van Den Driessche, Éric Poulain, Pierre Poirot, Peter Hudson, Simon Buret
Feature film, Fiction, Comedy, Adventure
Language(s) : French
Country : 100% French (FRANCE)
French release: : 09/11/2005
Running time : 102 mn
Production status : Released

But I still don't know if it is going to be released on DVD region 1.

Sorry to bring this up but nobody have new news for the U.S. release?

I don't think there will ever be a better piece of work in this department than the 70mm aerial photography of ''Battle of Britain''. Truly excellent, despite its minor flaws in special effects.

Bump

It looks like it could be fun. I doubt it'll be released as R1 as the US market for a "Frenchy Top Gun" (to quote a reviewer at amazon.fr) is probably not too big, although I'd assume there'd be a Quebeçois audience. But on the third hand, that hasn't helped release some other French films as R1.

I also didn't see any note of subtitles, although it does have a DTS track.

Well it finally arrive as a R1 DVD with the title Sky Fighters. I rented it today so I will post my impressions later.

The movie mets all my expectations. Nowadays that everything is computer generated it is very refreshing to see real aerial photography with real planes. Of course airplanes explosions were fake but all the dogfight scenes looked real to me. I read somewhere that the producers were granted a special permission and allowed to shoot over Paris. The shots over the alps where amazing!

I can't not talk much about picture quality or if the disc is a reference DVD because my LCD projector broke :( and I watched the movie in my 19" LCD computer display. At least in that display it looks very good.

About the story, plot, acting, etc. well I have to be honest with you, I wasn't looking much into it. I watch it in the original French soundtrack with English sub-titles because the English soundtrack sounds fake. Anyway the plot and acting wasn't that bad. In terms of sounds effects I had heard better, like Final Countdown and Pearl Harbor but again the aerial footage is REAL. If you found Top Gun's plot and acting acceptable you should not have any problems with this one.

So I will recommend the DVD if you are an avid fan of military aviation/action movies.