‘The Blue Angels’ documentary hits IMAX theaters on May 17 before streaming on Prime Video beginning May 23.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
The Navy’s elite Flight Demonstration Squadron, known as the Blue Angels, has been featured in various films and TV shows before. In 1994, Dennis Quaid narrated the TV movie “Blue Angels: Around the World at the Speed of Sound.” “The Blue Angels” was the name of a fictional 1960-61 TV series featuring a young, little-known actor named Burt Reynolds. In 1975, the actor Leslie Nielsen (“Forbidden Planet”) narrated the documentary “Threshold: The Blue Angels Experience.” Now, producers J.J. Abrams and Glen Powell (“Anyone But You”) and British director Paul Crowder (“Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who”) bring us a new documentary titled “The Blue Angels.”
With Powell, who played pilots in both “Devotion” (2022) and “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022), producing and Hans Zimmer (“Top Gun: Maverick”) providing the music, it’s not hard to draw a line from the recent “Top Gun” phenomenon to this IMAX-shot celebration of the world’s most famous aviation show. “The Blue Angels,” like the “Top Gun” films, is a recruitment tool for the Navy and the Marine Corps (pilots from both are eligible to serve in The Blue Angels) and the armed services in general. But the film, which covers a year in the life of the Blue Angels, is also a rousing and intimate celebration of grit, discipline, and team spirit. It is not just about the six pilots that comprise the team’s core. The film introduces viewers to many of the 141 personnel, whose job is to get the team and their azure blue 22-ton Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornets from place to place in the United States and Canada while on tour and to keep the planes and the team’s C-130 Super Hercules cargo plane in top order.
Director Crowder does a fine job of introducing us to the pilots and other members of the team. Aerial cinematographers Lance Benson and Michael FitzMaurice (another “Top Gun: Maverick” veteran) seem to have spent as much time airborne as the flyers and the views are predictably dazzling and dizzying. Perhaps inspired by the 1930s French precision aviation team “Patrouille de France,” the “Angels” were the 1946 brainchild of Adm. Chester Nimitz, Naval Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet during World War II.
“The Blue Angels” film takes a standard up-close-and-personal approach. We meet effusive commander Brian C. Kesselring, who refers to himself as “lead goose.” He is at the end of his two-year deployment and is replaced by current commanding officer Alexander P. Armatas. We see both Armatas and Amanda Lee, the first female Blue Angels demonstration pilot, train on a punishing centrifuge device to develop their ability to withstand extreme G-forces, which can render a pilot unconscious.
The pilots also demonstrate various forms of “aerobatics:” rolls, flying upside down, and the super-tight formation known as the Diamond 360, during which four jets fly mere inches apart. Two solo flyers perform vertical climbs and “opposite passes,” during which they appear on a collision course. We are reminded that in 2016, a Blue Angel pilot was killed during a training exercise while flying too close to the ground in Smyrna, Tenn. (in fact, 26 pilots have been killed flying with the Blue Angels, along with two ground crew). As someone observes, the Blue Angels are a cross between a sports team and a rock band. Pilots are greeted like superstars by the crowds, especially the children. Team members sign autographs and pose for photographs. The only Black pilot on this current team recalls being taken to Tuskegee Air Force base as a child and resolving there and then to be a pilot when he grows up. See “The Blue Angels” at AMC Assembly Row in IMAX on Friday or wait to catch it on Prime Video starting May 23. Up, up, and away.
‘The Blue Angels’
Rating: G
Cast: Brian Allendorfer, Amanda Lee, Brian C. Kesselring
Director: Paul Crowder
Writer: Uncredited
Running time: 94 minutes
Where to Watch: AMC Assembly Row and May 23 on Prime Video
Grade: B+
Boston Movie News 
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