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‘The Blue Angels’ Review: Dazzling Imax Documentary Showcases Top Guns, but No Mavericks
Director Paul Crowder’s 'The Blue Angels' follows the elite flying squadron through a season of demo maneuvers, bringing audiences along for the ride.
Less a celebration of the U.S. Navy’s Mavericks than its Top Guns, the film focuses on several pilots — in particular, Angels first-year flyers Chris “Cheese” Kapuschansky and Scott “Jamz” Goossens — as they learn the difficult choreography and rigorous standards maintained by the squadron. Crowder ceremoniously drops the audience into the Angels’ world with a recitation of their creed, and then immediately shifts locations to a briefing room where Brian “Boss” Kesselring, the organization’s 2022 flight leader, uses piloting shorthand to sprint through a breakdown of the environmental conditions the team will face. The detour adds a degree of complexity to what is meant to be an informational, even celebratory look at the Angels, building a cumulative intensity to the final chapter of the film, in which Kesselring concludes his tenure as flight leader and selects his own replacement, an operational opportunity shared by few other divisions in the military.
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