Dywizjon 303

Occasionally the budget does leave it looking slightly tacky but the story and performances make it a worthwile watch and is certainly something that should be known by more.

For starters I was a military pilot for 24 years and have combat experience. The current lead review states that the combat scenes were "very amateurish" ... not true and I will wager that the reviewer has never engaged in air-to-air gunnery. I have ... and it looks just about like it was depicted.

Second ... this is a true story. I did a bit of research on the 303 and the movie depiction (except maybe for the social aspects) seems very true. 303 had a remarkable combat record.

The character development was OK. It conveyed the motivations of the key players. The thing that really dragged this movie down for me was the direction. Four languages are spoken: English, German, Polish and Russian. I have reasonable fluency in 2 of the 4 but I will wager that there are very few who do not need subtitles. The director cuts back and forth in location and time, often jumping several years. The jumps are revealed in a note on the left corner of the screen while at the same time you are trying to read fast moving subtitles. Too much work. Hard to follow. With better direction to avoid this random jumping, I would have rated this an 8.

All in all a good flick, well worth watching. And I thank the 303 for their heroic service in an unimaginably tough air war that really saved the world.

This subject of WWII history surely deserves a movie, but it's too bad, that it ended up like this.

The flying scenes really look great, the CGI production was worth every penny. Unfortunately they couldn't really do anything with it, because the combat scenes were written just poorly. As soon as they got up in the air, they instantly bumped into some geman plane and they shot it down. Thrilling, isn't it?

When the CGI takes most of the budget, they need to save cash on different areas: -I swear, like 2/3 of the movie plays in pubs or restaurants. After a while this could become like a drinking game, it's that laughable. As soon as they leave the pub, you can place your bets, that they will be back almost instantly. -The acting is quite stiff and the bad and pointless dialogues don't make their job easier -The script is so pointless from time to time. Random flashbacks, that don't add anything, strange love plots that have no depth and you won't believe even for a second. Also the portrait of the british generals is just non-sense. For quite a time they are actually more evil than the nazis. -I do understand that this is a story about the polish squad, but the polish pathos here was strong, it was hard to take after a while. It was like these handful of polish fighters fought back the whole nazi Luftwaffe themselves and the brits had nothing to do with it.

It was an ambitious project to do, unfortunately it seems it ended up in the wrong hands

The plot unfolds out of sequence, very much in the style of Quentin Tarantino, and major characters are not introduced. But, for those who know the history of the period their role in the story is obvious. The flying scenes are mostly excellent and the true story gets a reasonable representation. Overall, it's well done and worth seeing.

A good film, and a serious attempt to represent 'how it was' for Polish pilots in the Battle of Britain. The flying sequences are excellent, and they correctly portray the stupid Fighter Command early tactics, finally moving to 'finger 4' formation late in the battle.

One gripe. "The Battle of Britain" 1967 started the idea that Polish (and other) squadrons were kept out of the battle because of racism. That is not correct. It was Dowding's decision and he wouldn't have them because of sloppy R/T procedure, which the film highlights BTW. Going into the battle Dowding had a very clunky radar (far, far behind German radar although he didn't know that) which meant that the battle had to be controlled from a battle control room that collated the information. That was entirely new, but turned out to be a huge strength. The battle control room controlled the battle over radio, again entirely new, one voice channel for the whole battle. If any pilot left his R/T on send it jammed communication and control was lost, battle control lost communication with their pilots in the air. The Poles were wonderful pilots and very brave, but they wouldn't shut up, they kept leaving their R/T on send in training. So they were kept in reserve until it got desperate, then we saw what they could do. They still didn't shut up.