Born to Fly review – Chinese Top Gun puts tech propaganda in the frontline

The pilots in this so-called Chinese Top Gun are mostly top in the sense that they are in selfless support of China’s frontline troops thanks to the emerging technological superiority of the People’s Republic (which would have made for a less snappy title). Another in China’s seemingly never-ending line of propagandistic, government-backed action films, this is only distinguished in dunderheaded patriotism from its American 80s and 90s equivalents by its absence of any functioning sense of humour.

It’s about the country’s next-generation fighter pilots, but the plot is last-generation: promising flyboy Lei Yu (Wang Yibo) is plucked from his unit by veteran Zhang Ting (Hu Jun) to join the elite outfit trying to get “limit data” at high-altitude from the new stealth planes. Apart from a passing rivalry with Deng Fang (Yu Yosh), that’s about it. But the drama of interest is taking place outside the confines of this film, as referred to in Born to Fly’s constant political pep talks about foreign powers trying to contain China and impinging on its waters. The prologue features a pair of these incursive badboys who declare: “We can come and go whenever we want.”

Wrong, lawbreaker! Driven on by Zhang lecturing them about the country singlehandedly clawing its way back from postwar strategic inferiority, Lei and buddies put themselves on the line to develop cutting-edge tech for China’s servicemen – thereby giving director Liu Xiaoshi the opportunity for a couple of antsy spin-out sequences.

It’s not like Top Gun and the Rambo sequels weren’t also full of the same hot jingoism, but crucially they never forgot a sense of fun. But the attempts at “attitude” here are toe-curlingly timid and committee-stamped: instructors who mess up must wear a little top-knot, while Zhang’s idea of letting the recruits cut loose is dumplings night round his place.

Moreover, it seems to be part of patriotic action movie DNA that the protagonist superpower must disingenuously paint itself as the underdog, as Top Gun: Maverick did in taking on fifth-generation Russian-Iranian Sukhois in F18s. But, as in the Wolf Warrior franchise, Wandering Earth and Battle at Lake Changjin, Chinese blockbusters really excel at this, with the same strain of maudlin masochism on display in Born to Fly. Liu almost manages to throttle up how Lei and the instructors push themselves and their planes into something dramatically interesting, but it never ignites. In the meantime, this is less a movie, more a flying foreign policy document.

• Born to Fly is released in UK cinemas on 5 May, and is screening now in Australian cinamas.