Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26224 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-01-03
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 96 minutes

Synopsis
The future of mankind is threatened by an alien race called the Kilrathi who have discovered the way to Earth. Only two fighter pilots stand in their way.

Customer Reviews

Sci-fi war movie
Many years ago I played the computer game 'Wing Commander' and it was interesting to hear of this movie! Yes it is based on the game but no that doesn't make it rubbish! I found it very entertaining and well made. Lots of British actors and a good script. The special effects sometimes were impressive, but other times were too obviously computer generated.

Essentially this is a story told from one side's point of view. It follows the exploits of two pilots and the others on the Tiger Claw starship. There are many similarities with war films. There's a scene where a destroyer is hunting them, they mustn't make a sound and everyone on the bridge looks at one another just like in one of those submarine war films. There's even a noise like a sonar beep!

There are a few tense scenes and lots of action. On the negative side, sometimes you go from a tense moment to an action one so quickly you forget what the plot is and why exactly they're there. But that's minor, overall any sci-fi fan will enjoy this movie. It's not the best, but it's certainly worth seeing.

Surprised we haven't heard more about this film!
At the time of writing, this DVD is doing the rounds in the supermarkets, and never having seen it before took a gamble on buying it. It's really a cross between modern Battlestar Gallactica and Starship Troopers (but much less gung ho)

Why do I like this film? Well it has a good strong story line. Plot centres about three fighter pilots as part of a fleet having to defend the Earth against a hostile alien race. Lead actors are backed up by an interesting and established array of actors as supporting cast, notably David Suchet of Poirot fame and David Warner of "The Omen" and Star Trek (TNG) who lend enormous credibility.

Another interesting feature of this film is how command shifts from person to person as those who know what needs to be done step forward to take charge. This film is definitely worth a sequel or even a mini series to develop cast and story in greater detail.

The bad things about this film (and these are very minor ones) 1) Should have made it slightly longer even a full two hours to allow greater depth and detail. 2) Should have had much better publicity at the time of making because I am quite up on SciFi and this film completely escaped my attention until now! 3) Sadly no Extra features were available even biographies of the actors would have been good or some short interviews with cast and crew. But putting those points aside add it to your sci-fi genre category if you havent already done so!

Excellent Movie, let down only by the encoding.
Everyone who has seriously rated this movie [references to the bible and life changing nobel prize winning appart ;-) ] agrees it is an excellent movie. The only thing I can add is that I wish this movie would be re-released as an anamorphic widescreen DVD or in HD. As was usual many years ago, DVD encoding companies had no idea how to properly encode video to work well on 4:3 (old style) TVs and 16:9 (widescreen) TVs as really there were few to no widescreen TVs available and reading an obscure bit of the encoding manual was really optional at that time. This release has huge black bars top and bottom as the 2.35:1 ratio is fitted into a 4:3 screen space. If the choice was between this format and cropping then I would take this format any day, but a budget re-release as 2.35:1 on 16:9 (anamorphic widescreen) would be much better.