Hurricane - Luftschlacht um England

It's 1940 and France is about to fall. Polish fighter pilot Jan Zumbach (Iwan Rheon) steals a plane and escapes to England. He joins a group of international fliers eager to fight the Nazis and resists being relegated to the bombers. Witold Urbanowicz is one of the first Poles allowed to fly a fighter plane. Eventually, they are allowed to form the legendary No. 303 Squadron. Phyllis Lambert works in the RAF war room.

This starts out well. The story of the Polish fliers is compelling. Not everything is the best. The CGI aerial dogfights are not the highest quality. There are some tangential plot elements that muddle the story. It's not unexpected to have a racist British officer in this movie but it pushes every villainy onto him by making him a sexual harasser. He goes off the deep end unnecessarily. The short flashbacks are fine to lay down the groundwork for their motivations but they need to be longer to fill out their stories. As a traditional war movie, this is fine but nothing special.

I have just come back from the cinema and wanted to share my thoughts. I don't want to spoil anything so I'm keeping the plot to the minimum. The movie is based on true accounts of the finest of Polish squadrons, the 303 squadron formed in RAF, Northolt. It tells the bittersweet story of people who had nothing but themselves and their skills to offer in the fight against Germans during WWII. (Note, I'm not writing Nazis. These were Germans of that era). Having been thought of like the scum of the earth, these men proved that given the opportunity they can be incomparable in the air battles while many English pilots weren't even combat ready. The movie plays itself a bit slowly, CGI isn't the best you can get these days, there are many fictional subplots interwoven by the ones responsible for the screenplay, also there are some emblems missing from the planes, most notably the Polish checkered logo and Donald Duck from Zumbach's (Rheon's) plane. Despite those slight omissions, and some fictitious plots it is quite enjoyable. It takes itself seriously, without pompous heroism nor wallows in martyrdom. It is a well organized, quite serious flick that makes you think. Most people didn't realize it at the time but Poland lost due to the fact that before the war there were only 20 years of freedom, hence the military was not ready to deal with Germans' forces. There were atrocities committed all over Poland, but some people were able to flee and add to the allied effort, it's great that they're getting the recognition they had deserved. I highly recommend it to anyone, even though it might be a bit uncomfortable for some British to watch.

After eighty years of silence from Hollywood around the most inspiring epic story of WWII, suddenly in 2018 two movies were released about the Polish 303 Squadron based at RAF Northolt for the Battle of Britain. This little known story that surely deserves to be told, is based on the real story of the Polish Government moving itself and their military to Britain after Poland was invaded by the Germans in the west and the Russians in the east. But Does MISSION OF HONOR do this story justice? With tarty WAFs, bullying snobbish RAF pilots, and dispicable RAF officers, the inspirational core of the story seems to get lost in a series of unfortunate events, which should be that these highly skilled pilots decimated the Luftwaffe, outshone the British pilots, flew day and night in all weather daringly downing double the number of the planes that the British downed, and turned the tide of the war by preventing Hitler from invading Britain, and therefore making it possible for the Americans to have bases there. Perhaps this story has not been told in war movies because the West is ashamed of the ending. While the allies won the war, Poland became a satellite of the Soviet Union, and the Polish Military were not allowed to be a part of the Victory Parade because it would have offended Stalin. This movie is unsurprisingly anti-British in its bias, but does not allude to how the Polish pilots were appreciated by the common people of Britain as their exploits were heralded on the radio and Pathe News.

Watch this movie. The total budget was likely what was spent just for catering a 'skyscraper' movie I wasted a few hours watching. I AM an aficionado of WW2, I can spot mistakes. AND? The story of these brave men is not well known - a pity. There were several groups of pilots from several occupied countries who made it to Britain and fought like lions. The poles, were brave - and nuts. Some of the crazy scenes - are true (not a spoiler). The effects - yah, not up to Hollywood top CGI, but, enjoy a true story with good acting,

Where to begin? This film is disappointing on so many levels.

To begin with the script must have been written by a teenager, or at best a millennial with no appreciation for how people spoke on the 1940s. Time and again words were used that brought me up with a bump and a cringe. "Thanks for the invite" is a horrible late 20th century replacement for "Thanks for the invitation". It just grates. And no one ever said "Roger that" in that era. There are other examples but I gave up on hoping for script authenticity after a short while.

But the absolute worst of this film was the total ignorance of aerial combat in the Second World War. Fighter pilots never EVER flew straight and level for more that 5 seconds at a time, and they were constantly swivelling their heads to scan the sky for the enemy. So to see Hurricanes and ME109s flying in a straight line with the pilots staring fixedly ahead like Sunday day-trippers in the middle lane of an empty motorway was risible in the extreme.

The combat scenes were created in CGI by kids who, again, have no clue as to how it actually took place. The Hurricane couldn't out-fly the ME109. The latter could out-climb even the more agile Spitfire, and though it couldn't out-turn a Spitfire it certainly could the Hurricane. So we were treated to scenes of 109s flying straight and level while Hurricanes picked them off and blew them out of the sky. That just didn't happen. Actually, the CGI fighter sequences in Star Wars were more akin to how it was, not the pedestrian sequences we were obliged to watch.

In fact anyone who has read anything about the Battle of Britain knows that the Hurricane was always sent to engage the slow-moving bombers. The German fighters that we're sent to protect them were taken on by the Spitfires. The high kill score for Hurricane squadrons was for bombers; hugely important because it was the bombers that did the damage on the ground. But of course that doesn't chime with the desired picture of sky-jockeys in one-on-one combat.

Oh, and the skin of the Hurricane was FABRIC not metal, so the sight of bullets spanging off the metal sides of these planes was completely incorrect. It's the Spitfire that had an aluminium monocoque fuselage.

And the women at the plotting table? The idea that one of them would countermand the instructions of the senior officer in charge of deploying the squadrons is ridiculous.

This film was a juvenile attempt at heroic storytelling that dismally failed, and made a bit of a mockery of the real Polish heroes of the RAF. The storyline was weak, the dialogue written by people with a tin ear for the period, and combat sequences that would have been acceptable if someone on the team had done just one hour's research.

And the final engagement between the hero's Hurricane and the 109? I won't deliver a spoiler but it was absolutely ridiculous.

For shame.