Speed & Angels brings you right into the cockpit.

If you’ve ever dreamed of flying for the Navy, filmmaker Peyton Wilson’s film gives an up-close and very personal look at how to go about it. Her documentary Speed and Angels, which has its first showing the 11th Newport International Film Festival at 7 p.m. tomorrow at the Jane Pickens Theater, is probably the best recruiting tool the Navy has had in years.

Wilson was given unprecedented assistance by the Navy in being able to follow two young Naval Academy graduates on their quests to fly the F-14 Tomcat into history. (The plane, which was seen in the movie Top Gun and inspired at least one of the two in their dreams, was decommissioned not long after they flew missions into Iraq on it.)

Jay and Meagan (no last names used) are among the few to make it to Navy flight school. Wilson’s camera followed them for two years, from their earliest training — Meagan nearly passes out during a G-force test in a centrifuge — to their attempts to land on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier — not the easiest thing to accomplish, especially at night — to their final assignments in the Persian Gulf where they supported ground troops in Iraq.

There are some spectacular cockpit views of low test flights over the Nevada desert, hair-raising moments as the camera follows them during a dogfight training mission at 200 miles an hour and even scarier moments as they try to land, not always successfully, aboard an aircraft carrier. At one point Jay has some tense moments when, with less than 100 hours of combat flying under his belt, he tries to provide air cover for a convoy under attack in an ambush in Mosul, Iraq.

It’s not all glory, however. Meagan feels herself under pressure as she struggles to land her plane gracefully on an aircraft carrier because she’s one of the few women to fly an F-14 and doesn’t want to let down her sex. Jay is under pressure while flying his first combat mission, just missing being hit by a surface-to-air missile that he didn’t see headed at him.

Wilson personalizes her film by interviews with their families and friends. There’s a frank discussion with Meagan and her two sisters, who are opposed to war and don’t like the fact that she will be assigned to Iraq one day. Jay, who once made a miraculous recovery from a bullet that was accidentally fired into his face, is awkward at being the center of attention at a welcome-home celebration in his honor at the local Veterans Hall. With these vignettes Wilson lifts the strong-silent-type mystique about fighter pilots and makes them like the people who might live next door.

Speed and Angels will be screened at 7 p.m. tomorrow and 3 p.m. Saturday at the Jane Pickens Theater as part of the 11th Newport International Film Festival. Tickets, $10, are sold at the festival box office at 22 Broadway, online at www.newportfilmfestival.com and at (401) 835-5356.

****Speed and Angels

Rated: Not rated, contains profanity.

mjanuson@projo.com