Matty flies high with a decent Phillip J. Roth caper.

As with its spiritual successor Falcon Down (2001), HYPERSONIC (or, as it’s sometimes styled, ‘Hyper Sonic’) is among the few Unified Film Organization epics of its period to not debut as part of the company’s longstanding deal with SyFy. Instead, it arrived on U.S. video on 5th November 2002 — three and a half weeks ahead of SyFy’s Interceptor Force 2 (2002) premiere — as a Blockbuster Exclusive through UFO’s pact with DEJ/First Look subsidiary, City Heat Productions. The pairing yielded Lost Voyage (2001); Mindstorm (2001) (aka ‘Project: Human Weapon’); Dark Descent (2002); fellow race caper Landspeed (2002); the aforementioned Falcon Down; and Shark Hunter (2001), which also starred Hypersonic’s lead, Antonio Sabato Jr. The film was issued on British tape and disc as ‘Hypersonic: Air Race Earth’ via another key UFO supplier, Third Millennium, in the first quarter of 2004.  

With one finger in the DTV military hardware pie (a cycle instigated by Andrew Stevens’ mighty Crash Dive (1996)), another in the Hollywood sports movie (Any Given Sunday (1999) and Driven (2001) et al), and its other three digits tickling disaster flicks, political thrillers, and that early ‘00s bent for stories set in the world of reality television, Hypersonic is too messy and schizophrenic to be thunk a UFO essential. Nevertheless, there’s some awesome stuff on display. Directed by UFO chieftain Phillip J. Roth, the film’s opening is hugely effective. Its swooning, dreamy vibe is augmented by the soaring, guitar score of shingle favourite Rich McHugh (Velocity Trap (1999), Escape Under Pressure (2000)), and the action sequence that follows is exciting and wholly indicative of Hypersonic’s overall entertainment factor. 

The sets, locations, props and costumes are deliberately comic book-y, and the photography – by Roth regular Todd Barron, who’d cement his place in cult cinema history by lensing Tommy Wiseau’s infamous The Room (2003) between several UFO assignments (Flight 747 (2003), Deep Shock (2003), Maximum Velocity (2003)) – is stylish and energetic. Per UFO’s FX pic ethos, the CGI is superb in relation to Hypersonic’s chump change budget, and the showy, excessive and wildly OTT attitude Roth fosters suits the preposterous plot. 

An air calamity, brotherly love, and a televised, globe-trotting jet race for a massive $25million purse…

Though the script leans heavily on exposition and scene-by-scene reminders to keep us up to snuff, Hypersonic is a lively and imaginative mix in terms of sequence and spectacle. Moreover, the character drama hits the requisite emotional peaks and pushes the right pleasure buttons despite the tinny, nudge-along dialogue. Then at the height of his DTV drawing power, Sabato Jr. is a solid hero — but the acting honours belong to UFO perennial William Zabka as a shady executive, and a snarling, smarmy Adam Baldwin as a ‘Killian in The Running Man (1987)’-like presenter. 

Alongside Shark Hunter, Python 2 (2002), Dark Descent (2002), and Antibody (2002), Hypersonic is one of five UFO films to be dedicated to the memory of unit production manager/producer Janine Clark. Tragically, Clark was killed in a car accident in Sofia, Bulgaria on 11th September 2001, the same day as the Twin Towers terrorist attack. She was thirty-three years old. 

USA/Bulgaria ● 2002 ● Action ● 94mins

Antonio Sabato Jr., Adam Baldwin, William Zabka ● Dir. Phillip J. Roth ● Wri. Chris Beach, Sam Wells and Phillip J. Roth (as ‘Paul Joshua Rubins’)