The movie inevitably carries a high degree of vertical intertextuality with "Top Gun" (Dir: Tony Scot, 1986) and is nicknamed the French "Top Gun". There is a deluge of air flight scenes and POV shots from the cockpit. Dynamic camera movements and match of camera movements in editing are used not merely for the air scenes but throughout the screen time of 102 minutes. Director Gerard Pires fits camera dynamics well into the story. Most notably, sonic explosion is brought into mise-en-scene though it is not completely in line of the reality (It is a flick!). Pires also brings a few visual humours and uses diegetic music (the MP3 of a pilot) in the air scenes, which is unprecedented in the genre.

Yet the flick is not comparable to "Top Gun", "Firefox" (Dir: Clint Eastwood, 1982) and "Behind Enemy Lines" (Dir: John Moore, 2001) as the plots are disintegrated. Though the narrative is unrestricted, the film is weak in suspense and the disintegration further weakens the tension which almost does not exist. Neither the peril of the country nor the danger of the protagonists, Capt Marchelli (Benoit Magimel) and Capt Vallois (Clovis Cornillac), is amply exposed. The degree of suspense and momentum of tension greatly diminish no sooner after the first 10% of the screen time with the denouement being an anti climax. It is a good choice for fans of air fighters because of its Mirage flight visuals but fanatics of thrillers will be disappointed by the narrative vanity in hermeneutics.