ada
the leading man is my tpye
FirstWitch
A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.
Lidia Draper
Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.
Raymond Sierra
The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
terrencewallis
I read tedg's review & wondered why he missed the central message of this wonderful film? Persecuted men helped another country to fight the persecutors by doing the very dangerous task of flying fighter aircraft. At the end of hostilities they go home & are persecuted by their post-war government. In the telling we see them under stress, much relieved by alcohol & why not? & responding to a few women, plus the Spitfires & beautifully filmed aerial warfare. This is the sort of things they did!! Models & radio controlled ones too, had me fooled. This is a superb film about very very brave men. You will not see better & the huge plus is, it's not Hollywood.
latinese
Compared to Battle of Britain, this is a real film, with real characters and a real plot. Battle of Britain is basically a documentary with the occasional Lawrence Olivier and Michael Caine, but the real protagonists are the Spits, the Hurricanes, etc. Here, on the other hand, you have two well-wrought characters (actually three) and a real plot. I strongly recommend it to anybody, even to those who are not particularly fond of war movies. It's well filmed, and I wonder what the director might do if he had the big capitals behind him. And I do not think that it's over-sentimental. It's only that in the fighters you have real people, with real feelings and a real life--as real as any fictional life in any great film.
frank-270
This is a beautifully-made film, finely balancing the fragile human stories (both before and after 1945) and the indiscriminating combat of war. The use of outtakes from Battle of Britain (a film that does not nearly so well portray the 1940s!) enhances, rather than detracts from the whole. A deeply impressive work, this lived in my memory for the 2 years since I saw it, and I have just bought it to explore the making-of extras.I highly recommend this film (movie). Like "Aces High", it alternates between viscerally exciting (or scary) air combat sequences, where the viewer might experience actual loss of characters they'd come to care about, but also unpredictable interactions on the ground, where skillful writers and real-life experiences inform some involving and moving events. This also underlines the fact that for many people, 1945 marked not just the end of one conflict but the beginning of another, and even today we still don't recognise the loss, bravery and sacrifice of so many nameless heroes, or even worse we venerate them from a distance without allowing them to be human beings with all the emotional weaknesses that entails - making their sacrifices all the more valiant.Watching this movie is an experience which will take you from the heights of friendship to the depths of jealousy, and back to love that endures even beyond death. If all war films were like this, we'd never have to fight again.Did I mention it's worth watching? ;-)10/10
indrasnet
This is the movie that finally pushed me over the line into registering with IMDb so that I could vote for (and comment on) it. I've only recently come to appreciate well-produced "war" movies, and this is one of the most thoughtful I've seen."Stunning" is the word that comes to mind when I think of this viewing experience. My husband and I watched this film last night for the first time. It is gently moving, yet exciting at the same time (not a contradiction). This story in the hands of Hollywood could have become just another smarmy, action-packed, Top Gun time-waster.The two lead actors playing Frantisek and Karel played off of each other marvelously well; and Krystof Hadek is a very "pretty" boy without seeming to exaggerate or exploit that fact. In terms of Hadek's acting ability and appearance, my husband said (tongue-in-cheek), "Well, he's no Tom Cruise." I replied, "Thank God!" If you appreciate beautiful and understated acting, see this one.