Diagonaldi Very well executed

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

shakercoola With a budget in the region of £149m in today's money, Battle of Britain was a huge production with a galaxy of international stars. The aerial sequences are riveting, the action compelling. There isn't a great deal of character development and it is flat in parts, and the score is platitudinous, but this is a copper-bottom action film and Guy Hamilton was an accomplished technician and the man to turn to in this genre in the early 1970s. There's no getting away from the telling of events as they occurred and they had to honour the real pilots and ground staff who gave their lives to the cause, so it's laden with acton. The film is generally faithful to real events and it has a relatively upbeat tone given the subject matter which I suppose helps due to its 2hs 13mins length. No epic retellings should be of shorter duration. I'd avoided watching the film for years, probably because of what I 'd perceived as a grainy film stock but recent releases improve the quality and even so, I now think the dated feel adds to the spectacle.

GusF Designed to commemorate Britain's finest hour, the film is badly let down by its poorly paced, badly written script. It has a great cast including Laurence Olivier, Christopher Plummer, Michael Caine, Robert Shaw, Trevor Howard, Edward Fox, Susannah York, Michael Redgrave and Curd Jürgens but most of them either have too little screen time or subpar material so their talents are not used effectively. Bond veteran Guy Hamilton's direction is quite pedestrian. The flying scenes are spectacular but a great looking film with a bad script isn't worth much. Never in the field of human cinema has such a good cast been assembled for such a boring film.The few historical characters, particularly Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, are fairly well treated but the fictional ones are paper thin and poorly characterised. The Harveys' marital problems were given far too much attention. The subplot was uninteresting, melodramatic, clichéd, distracting and predictable. Speaking of historical characters, the real Dowding, who died only a few months after the film was released, visited the set during filming. Furthermore, Jürgens' character Baron von Richter is a thinly veiled version of Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Nazi Foreign Minister and former Ambassador to the UK who was convicted of war crimes and executed in 1946. I fail to see why they could not have simply used von Ribbentrop as a character, particularly since it was specifically mentioned that von Richter spent several years in Britain. Several people who were directly involved in the battle such as the RAF flying ace Robert Stanford Tuck and his Luftwaffe counterpart (and postwar close friend) Adolf Galland acted as consultants but are not depicted as characters in the film, at least not directly. I watched the fascinating episode of "The World at War" (narrated by Olivier, incidentally) dealing with the battle a few days ago. Galland discusses it from the German perspective at some length and claimed that, even in 1940, he did not believe that Germany could have won the battle (without the support of the army and navy) in spite of the Luftwaffe's superior numbers in large part because they had only thirty minutes of fuel for each flight. He also said that he did not think that Operation Sea Lion had a serious chance of success, a view now shared by many historians.Overall, this is a very forgettable film about a hugely significant chapter in British and world history which should never be forgotten. I can't fault the film's intentions, only its execution. The film's heart was most assuredly in the right place but the material deserved a considerably better treatment. The only reason that it inspired any emotional reaction at all is that it was based on a real event with a high casualty rate. Bitterly disappointing.

buiger I was very lenient in rating this movie for two reasons: - I am a sucker for these types of movies - I thought that for a movie made in 1969 with very good special f/x for the time, some of the naiveté could be forgiven Otherwise I agree with Ebert. It is not a wonder that notwithstanding that this was am A-grade mega production, it did not receive even one award or even nomination worthy of mention.This movie is far too slow, especially the battle scenes. The repeat themselves almost endlessly and seem to be the 'raison d'etre' of the movie. What is missing is characterization, introspection, real emotions. We need to feel with the protagonists, see and comprehend their fear, be apart of it. In this film pilots live and die, and somehow we couldn't care less, it doesn't bring up any emotions in us. Historically, the movie is correct, but there again it lacks in detail, more 'behind the scenes' information. What they feed us is only the basic information you learn in 4th grade. Definitely not enough. All in all, average. What a pity, considering the star saturated cast and all the money spent.

The_Other_Snowman Despite what the title suggests, this is not really a film about the Battle of Britain. While it follows the basic plot of the Battle, and features various public-domain characters like Hugh Dowding and Adolf Hitler, it's primarily a series of expensive air battles strung together with expository dialogue. If you like that sort of thing, it's a fine movie.The fleet of vintage aircraft assembled for the picture is impressive, even though armchair historians will happily point out the sundry inaccuracies: for example, all the German aircraft in the film are actually Spanish Air Force planes fitted with British Rolls-Royce engines -- the same ones the British Spitfires and Hurricanes had. Many of the Spitfires are later marques, and there are several types absent from the German air force. (Displaying an appalling lack of foresight, most air forces scrapped their fighters and bombers at the end of the war so they could start building jets instead, causing endless frustration for future generations of film-makers.) Despite all that, this is one of the few movies to get anywhere near the reality of 1940 with its skies full of planes.The non-flying scenes act as a tribute to the Royal Air Force and, to a lesser extent, the people of England who lived through the Blitz. A-list actors like Michael Caine, Robert Shaw, and Christopher Plummer play the stalwart heroes with a minimum of characterization that ensures they will remain largely symbolic: they're figureheads rather than fictional characters. On the one hand this robs the film of human interest; on the other hand, it also avoids distracting the audience with unnecessary melodrama.The air battles are vividly choreographed and set to stirring martial music, mostly by Ron Goodwin, but with a cameo from Sir William Walton for the climax. Compared to "Tora! Tora! Tora!" -- 1970's cinematic assault on Pearl Harbor -- "The Battle of Britain" is slightly less elaborate but ultimately more satisfying. It's easier to make an exciting action movie when the good guys win, after all.