303 Squadron

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.

Beautiful story in a terrible performance. The acting game does not set the quality of this terrible montage. Rating high on 6 because of the real heroes. I hope to see some professional production about 303 Squadron, it does not count as one.

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 movie gets you perplexed. First you do not believe that, with Nazi aces being shot en masse, all Polish make it safe to an airfield. That is until you see the final credits which inform you that only 8 Polish pilots have been KIA in 303 Dywizjon. Otherwise the movie is overflown with Poles' victories of British women's hearts, their combat tactics superior to RAF's, and the ability to instantly command British fighter with never having flown them before. Many ends remain loose like the murky role of the actress Victoria Brown and sketchy story how Poles got finally to the Isles via Romania. The combat scenes are very amauterish perhaps due to the modest budget. Still, this is tribute to Polish heroes.

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.