Hurricane

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.

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.

Thank god the Polish fighter pilots were there to help us win the war, don't know if Britain would have survived without the 303 Squadron. They stopped the Nazis invading us!

Its amazing how a handful of pilots turned the war.

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.

One group of mostly unsung heroes are the international pilots who served with the British during WWII. In the case of "Hurricane" most of these pilots are Poles....Polish pilots who escaped to Britain after the fall of Poland in 1939. And, in some ways this film is a nice tribute to them and their heroism. I say 'in some ways' because sometimes the film is very good....and sometimes the writing is pretty insufferable. Too often, the men fight, argue and act in ways that the Poles couldn't have acted....and it felt so much like it was controversy and the like just for the sake of controversy in the film. And, it's all way overly melodramatic and ham-fisted. The men deserved better than this.