1/5 Truely abysmal!
  by mahoneko (UK)
This movie is just horrendous from beginning to end. There is no aspect of this movie that even approaches quality. A fairly good cast do the best they can with the script, but have obviously received poor direction and the film is cut in such a way that the acting comes across poorly too. The military screens look like they were library footage from the 70's and the special effects look like reject footage from the A-Team, yet the movie was made in 1998, years after Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 where ironnicaly the films star Robert Patrick played the liquid Terminator. With such an awful result, no wonder the director has really only worked in TV since. Only watch this movie if you want possibly the best example ever of how not to make a movie.

1/5 but the cat came back....
  by Akela (Russia)
That old kids song is a masterpiece of clever plotting, witty situations and all other things that make good story, compared to that movie.
I am sorry I even watched it. I always was a big Rutger Hauer fan and it hurts to see him doing smth that awful.
I wouldn't even give it a lonely star, only they do not have a "below zero" side to that scale.

2/5 A war of wills!
  by Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela)
This picture suffers of what once Hitchcock established as the three essential requirements to make a good film; First: a good script; Second a good script and Third: a good script.

The initial sequences are extremely stimulating. A Capitan has been absent along seven long years from his Aerial Activities, since the Gulf War. But the stage is totally different. We are in Serbia and we are in the middle of a blood Civil War, obviously the technology has enhanced but this man simply has not been able to overcome and dominate his inner dragons. He maintains the living flames of the deception and suffers of the famous transfer of guilty. In this case the victim is his old colleague who actually has been ascended to Colonel; that Rank differences is the first of countless insurmountable obstacles that slow but progressively will undermine his actually weak self stem until reaching what Freud remarked as the essential seed of the violence: the vital impulse of a self destruction impulse.

Rutger Hauger made a superb performance as the disturbed mind Captain and Robert Patric (the villain of Terminator II) is the Colonel. In this sense the proposal acquire interesting hues but something happened on the road. There are evident holes in the script that weakens seriously the final result. There are admirable aerial sequences and a dazzling handle of camera, but these grotesque and hard to believe narrative devices transform the fascinating beginning in another pop corned movie.

All serious screenwriter should respect the intelligence of the audience as first premise, unless your target is focused around the newcomer viewers. If that' s the case, please forget my discrepancies and nothing has happened.

This criterion difference may be the visible abyss between the consecrated Istvan Szabó, Mike van Diem, Lars von Triers, or Angelopoulus or the promising and distinguished Anthony Minghella or Taylor Hackford respect the fashion directors; the firsts bet for leaving a trace and the others...


2/5 ok for a normal night
  by (Dubai, UAE)
absolutely nothing special, and non convincing at some moments. I cannot understand how could only one person be able to drive an old Russian tank and fire its gun at the same time.

1/5 astoundingly bad!
  by Nichomachus
It's impossible to describe the level of absurdity this movie reaches. There is not a single thing right about it. It's incomprehensible that this thing was ever made; you've got to admire the insane levels of self-confidence necessary for letting this project go forward. The most vile assaults on logic accompany a tasteless script and mediocre acting. Every "twist" in this faux-psycho thriller/fighter-jock flick is telegraphed ten miles in advance, but you never believe they are willing to do something so obtuse.

Made in 1998, this movie makes Iron Eagle ('85) look positively clever and up to date. In fact the uber-low budget 'Tactical Assault' looks and feels like an awkward mid-80s clunker. Nothing is at all convincing, despite being utterly predictable. Military jargon is thrown around haplessly and the attempt to portray some kind of "war," that embarrassingly makes no sense whatsoever ("We've got a broken arrow situation here"). They try to pass F-4s off as MiGs, then have them combate F-16s ("He's on my tail. Get him off!!!") - pathetic. Whenever a decision has to be made by any of the characters, exactly the wrong choice is made. The characters, supposedly hot shot pilots, are merely insults to the gene pool. Nothing makes a lick of sense. There's no way and no point to listing this movie's inanities, but the tank scene alone (no security for parked tanks that are actually sitting loaded...) is priceless. We can only compliment it for the humorous lows it achieves.