First Light

"People say to me how do you remember these things? How do you expect me to forget? You don't. You can't.... The experiences of being a Spitfire fighter pilot in the battle of Britain stay with you forever. And you can't do anything about it." Geoffrey Wellum

This was so affecting! That it was true made it all the more poignant to watch. The fact that Wellum was teenager when he entered the RAF makes me realize all over again what the people of England were willing to do to protect their homes and their land. They sent their boys.

The story was told well. You saw what little training the RAF had. You saw their raw courage. You felt their tension and watched them deal with the losses of each of their own the best they could. You saw them fly exhausted into battle over and over and over again. You saw what it cost them mentally and emotionally.

The cast was wonderful. Sam Heughan did an amazing job as Wellum. You saw him change from boy to man. You could see and feel his emotions. He fully embodies the character.

Shout out to Gary Lewis and Ben Aldridge as squadron leaders. The rest of the cast was wonderful as well. Very believable.

It's a good thing to see this kind of movie and remind ourselves that what we enjoy and even deride today cost the ultimate sacrifice of millions. We must never forget...

Some here are always dissatisfied with that kind of movies; of course Battle of Britain is a masterpiece, but why diminish the real qualities of this movie which gives us from the very man who was in these terrible moments protecting us (I should say "you" as I'm French, but indirectly they protected us; had Britain fallen into the hands of the Berlin monsters it would have been worse than the actual occupation of France we suffered for all of us.)with his fellow pilots.

The power of this movie is summed up in the first phrases of Wellum long after the war. "you can't forget it" he says, and quite probably so true. The power of the movie is to take us right up into the minds and side effects of their jobs at an age when you should think yourself as eternal. Their reactions may seem shocking (see the arrival of Wellum at his station), but they are so true when you fight against fear everyday, well I suppose.

No, this is a great movie as the BBC often produces, full of emotion and I'm not ashamed to have succumbed to it. It was worth seeing.

I have always wanted to know of the real experiences of the WW2 Battle of Britain fighter pilots and here is one of the best presentations of one man's personal experiences. His story is beautifully dramatised, with some great air fights and on the ground the boredom, the fears as well as the good times. What the movie does best is convey the men's struggle to keep going when utterly exhausted and facing the possibility of death at any time. It's an intimate study and I believe a truthful one. The pilot Geoffrey "Boy" Wellum was still alive at the time of the making of the movie (because he was only a teenager when he first flew) and in voiceover reflects on those days. His final words are heart-breaking. Was it all worth it? To complement this film, a wonderful history of the Battle of Britain is in an episode of Battlefield Britain presented by Peter and Dan Snow on BBC DVD.

If you are looking for an action movie, look elsewhere. This semi-documetary biopic gives an honest, no frills account of life as an RAF Spitfire pilot during WW2.

very old school TV movie, slow pacing, contemplative bio pic of spitfire pilots during ww2. nothing we haven't seen or heard before and other than this is the story of from one mans point of view one wonders why this story needs to be told again and in this way. stiff upper lip, British heroes and bad bad Germans, it's like noting has changed in how we tell stories so we're left with a remake of what a TV movie about ww2 spitfire pilots might look like in the 50's or 60's. The good news is the spitfires look fantastic. I'm assuming some of them are CGI and they're really well done. In the old days these would be real but it's impossible to tell so well done to the fx and props crew.

This film was OK, nothing more than a Sunday afternoon TV movie, but with the amount of films being made today perhaps we do have a right to expect something better.