Sky Bandits

As others have noted, this movie is filled with bad effects, flat acting and any number of other problems. Yet there are many moments where it seems like the movie might work. But just when things start to get rolling, the timing goes out and suddenly its the most boring thing you've seen.

Consider the opening. It starts with a bunch of fast action scenes of our heroic duo blowing up banks one after another in quick succession. One of these consists of nothing more than throwing a bundle of dynamite in the door, causing the entire building to explode into matchsticks. Dumb, but fun.

And then for no reason I'll ever understand, the next heist is shown in excruciating detail... this time they're drilling holes into the safe and setting up this elaborate system for pouring in nitro. I don't know how they managed to do it, but they dragged this scene on for minute after minute of excruciating nothingness as the two banter on mindlessly, setting themselves up all-too-obviously to get caught. The entire movie dies right there, the pace just kills.

And it keeps doing this, over and over. Then we're in Europe, where there's a bunch of fast scenes while they shoot down a bomber with their pistols and then fly off. An excruciating scene follows. And again, and again and AGAIN. Over and over it looks like they just might pull it off and save it, only to bore you to death seconds later.

Bizarre!

If ever there was a film needing a re-edit it's this one. It lurches awkwardly from one scene to the next with an air of making it up as it goes along. Which is a shame as within all its staleness there is a good film in there somewhere. Okay the acting from the two leads is bad and the dialogue they have to say is worse. There's an attempt to make them lovable rogues but they come across as objectionable idiots. Nonetheless the film is chock full of invention, excellent design and pyrotechnics. It just doesn't flow as it should. Not a bad film as such but could do better. Hence a re-edit would save its potential. BTW Gunbus is available on Amazon Prime but the transfer is awful; VHS picture and distorted sound. Terrific poster though.

Not sure why nobody seems to like this movie. The acting is completely okay, the special effects are very 80s but not bad at all, and the story is that of a family-friendly adventure movie about two criminal but basically good-hearted rascals getting from one mess into the next. There's plenty of action as some more or less realistic WWI era aircraft (probably replicas) and several completely crazy, steampunk-like designs, for example an early 20th century car rebuilt as a double-decker airplane, shoot it out with an insanely huge German bomber airship that can launch rockets. Although one of the good guys dies in a bomb attack, which is presented as tragic, and it is implied, although not really shown, that others are shot down in their planes and probably die as well, there is nothing graphic or frightening being shown. It's basically about as violent and as scary as a Star Wars movie (which means not at all really), and much less so than Indiana Jones, for example. I didn't think it was particularly funny, although there were still a couple of scenes that made me laugh out. Which is about what you would expect considering that this isn't supposed to be a comedy but a light action-adventure movie. There's a whole lot of shooting and big explosions throughout the film. Movies like this (and Star Wars) were the reason why I had the misconception as a kid that wars were cool and exciting. I still grew up to become an utter pacifist, so I guess that's alright. I never saw Sky Bandits as a kid though and now is the first time I saw it or even heard of it, in my mid-fourties. Which is a shame really. I liked it now, but I really would have loved it when I was about 10.

My review was written in October 1986 after watching the film at a Times Square screening room.

"Sky Bandits" misfires on all cylinders. Meant as a rollicking World War I adventure, mishmash of a feature is missing a plotoline. Touted as the most expensive (production budget pegged at $18,000,000), indie British film ever, pic doesn't deliver the expected values on screen and has a no-name cast that won'[t help it attract attention domestically or overseas. Distrib Galaxy International has unwisely opted for a national saturation release.

Originally titled "Gunbus" (after the small fighter planes featured), Thom Keyes' unsatisfactory screenplay opens with a reel of two young heroes (Scott McGinnis and Jeff Osterhage) making like Butch Cassidy & Sundance (the early days, that is) in montages of bank robberies. Switch this pointless material headed nowhere the boys are suddenly sent to France to fight in the Great War against the dreaded hun.

Misadventures for the duo include a gam of one upmanship with haughty British flyers, a little sack time with two pretty mademoiselles (Valerie Steffen, Ingrid Held) and a mission to destroy a vast Graf Zeppelin the Germans are using for bombing runs. With dogfighter prowess picked up instantly (heroes decide to try piloting biplanes on a dare), they save the day and are subsequently back in the west blowing up banks quicker than you can say "Blue Max".

Film plods along episodically wit no forward momentum to the sotry: every once in a while there is a dissolve and a new scene has beguyn. Since Keyes' script lacks humor, the boring repartee between the two wooden heroes is downright deadly. What producer Richard Herland and director Zoran Perisic deliver is a succession of pretty but very fake-looking model plane shots or process shnots. The excitement of aerial dogfights, which have entertained audiences in hundreds of war films and served as the inspiration for "Star Wars" is missing.

Cast is tgruly awful, with the only familiar actor, Ronald Lacey, hamming it up and American leads McGinnis and Osterhage lacking the charisma this sort of yarn calls for. Production, including David Watkin's photography, is technically adequate but wholly lacking in verisimilitude. For all the money spent, it would have been more convincing to use stock footage left over from "Hell's Angels" The comic book approach doesn't work.

With Rank, ITC and Thorn EMI as recent examples, experienced British producers have learned how difficult it is to try and compete with the Americans via big-budget projects; modest efforts like "Gregory's Girl" and "My Beautiful Laundrette" have been more successful. "Sky Bandits" will undoubtedly reinforce this conventional wisdom.

I bought this movie for a laugh and boy did I get one, well more than one to be honest. In the UK this movie is called Gunbus, which is a much better title than Sky Pirates, especially as there are no pirates in this film or anything even resembling a pirate.

Its badly acted and directed and the script is very dodgy (I think I saw a few swastika's in there and this film is set during WW1 predating the nazis by a long way!) It is however very easy to laugh at as it so utterly pathetic. Even the "flashy" titles cant save this stinker.

A movie starring cowboys and made by them by the looks of things!