This film had all the ingredients of being a classic, but it isn't. The cast is excellent, the CGI is almost flawless, and so on, but it still it fails.
First, the classic trick inserting a retrospective part in a film, so loved by European film makers, slows it down and cuts it up, unless handled with expert care, which evidently is beyond director Jan Sverak, whose film Kolya I love. This time it really doesn't work!
Secondly, the pilots are all much too old to be realistic, except Karel, which makes him the sore thumb sticking out. A seasoned fighter pro in WWII was maybe 20, a Squadron Leader 22, while here the role of Squadron Leader is played by a guy about fourty, and the rest of the pilots seems to be about his age, except Karel. So to make it work, you have to use either an all old cast, or an all young cast, not pitch a 17 year old kid against an middle aged, if unmarried, man, who still has to sneak up to his loved one without her parents noticing anything - as believable as Steve McQueen at over 25 playing a 16 year old kid in the Blob!
Thirdly, a big part of the film is the shooting up a train, Karel's crash landing in enemy territory and the subsquent rescue by his Squadron Leader, who is also (later in the story) his rival in an amorous affair with a married woman.
For a Squadron Leader - normally the only guy trained and equipped for navigation in a squadron and very hard to replace - to risk an expensive plane and himself to pick up a crashed fellow pilot, no matter how close a friend he is, in the face of oncoming enemy troops, is hard to believe, especially when they both have to share a cramped Spitfire cockpit - two into a Skyraider, OK, but a Spit?! Come on, this part of the film is a Biggles adventure, not fitting a film that one is supposed to take seriously!
For the drama between the woman and the two men is very serious indeed and sad in many ways, and treated seriously in the story, and so is the grim fate that befell these heroes when they returned to Czechoslovakia, being treated no better than many of those who had cooperated with the Nazis.
I seriously think that if the film was re-edited, with the long scene mentioned above cut out (which Jan gleefully admitted cost as much as the entire Kolya film, to shoot, not to mention the CGI work involved), and the story line revised, so that we begin with the two friends at home in a Free Czechoslovakia and end with the prison life in Communist Czechoslovakia I am sure it would be a better film!
Sadly, again it has happened that a good director has been unable to kill his darlings, or in this case his father's darling (the blowing up of the train) - as daddy, as usual, wrote the script!
They could learn a lot from Steven Spielberg and his Saving Private Ryan, which is so much better, just by being concise and straight!
The DVD was good, the extra material OK, but not great in any way - but it did disclose that Jan had wanted to skip the train scene, but daddy had insisted, or he wouldn't talk to his son no more - end of story!
The CGI was next to perfect, the acting likewise (Tara Fitzgerald amazing as the woman), the flying scenes superb, but the whole less than satisfying - as with the film Enigma capable in every way, but not one I will voluntarily see again soon! Sad to say: 6/10!
First, the classic trick inserting a retrospective part in a film, so loved by European film makers, slows it down and cuts it up, unless handled with expert care, which evidently is beyond director Jan Sverak, whose film Kolya I love. This time it really doesn't work!
Secondly, the pilots are all much too old to be realistic, except Karel, which makes him the sore thumb sticking out. A seasoned fighter pro in WWII was maybe 20, a Squadron Leader 22, while here the role of Squadron Leader is played by a guy about fourty, and the rest of the pilots seems to be about his age, except Karel. So to make it work, you have to use either an all old cast, or an all young cast, not pitch a 17 year old kid against an middle aged, if unmarried, man, who still has to sneak up to his loved one without her parents noticing anything - as believable as Steve McQueen at over 25 playing a 16 year old kid in the Blob!
Thirdly, a big part of the film is the shooting up a train, Karel's crash landing in enemy territory and the subsquent rescue by his Squadron Leader, who is also (later in the story) his rival in an amorous affair with a married woman.
For a Squadron Leader - normally the only guy trained and equipped for navigation in a squadron and very hard to replace - to risk an expensive plane and himself to pick up a crashed fellow pilot, no matter how close a friend he is, in the face of oncoming enemy troops, is hard to believe, especially when they both have to share a cramped Spitfire cockpit - two into a Skyraider, OK, but a Spit?! Come on, this part of the film is a Biggles adventure, not fitting a film that one is supposed to take seriously!
For the drama between the woman and the two men is very serious indeed and sad in many ways, and treated seriously in the story, and so is the grim fate that befell these heroes when they returned to Czechoslovakia, being treated no better than many of those who had cooperated with the Nazis.
I seriously think that if the film was re-edited, with the long scene mentioned above cut out (which Jan gleefully admitted cost as much as the entire Kolya film, to shoot, not to mention the CGI work involved), and the story line revised, so that we begin with the two friends at home in a Free Czechoslovakia and end with the prison life in Communist Czechoslovakia I am sure it would be a better film!
Sadly, again it has happened that a good director has been unable to kill his darlings, or in this case his father's darling (the blowing up of the train) - as daddy, as usual, wrote the script!
They could learn a lot from Steven Spielberg and his Saving Private Ryan, which is so much better, just by being concise and straight!
The DVD was good, the extra material OK, but not great in any way - but it did disclose that Jan had wanted to skip the train scene, but daddy had insisted, or he wouldn't talk to his son no more - end of story!
The CGI was next to perfect, the acting likewise (Tara Fitzgerald amazing as the woman), the flying scenes superb, but the whole less than satisfying - as with the film Enigma capable in every way, but not one I will voluntarily see again soon! Sad to say: 6/10!