Really Surprised!

Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Set in England before the American entrance into World War II but made some seven years after the war ended, this personal drama of the life of squadron pilots is often touching, but mostly quite familiar. Many American films (as well as a few other classic British films) have touched on the same subject, and where this one succeeds is in its quiet moments as the interconnecting human relationships come full circle as personal conflict disappears for the benefit of a mission, in this case, keeping the English coastline safe from the invasion of those nasty Jerry's who cowardly invade in the middle of the night and create much chaos in their wake. With the squadron under the command of the stern but likable Jack Hawkins, the arrival of a new but inexperienced pilot (John Gregson) creates some tension. Much of the film deals with the day to day life of these young anxious pilots, but mostly focuses on Gregson, making a serious mistake during a spontaneous mission where the lives of the other pilots are put in danger because of his failure to stick to detail.The most important moment of this film occurs as one of the characters makes it clear through subtle hints that they will not be returning from their mission. The looks on the faces of the pilots and their leaders shows their horror over this revelation and creates an indelible human moment that can't be ignored. Even when Gregson is called on the carpet for his serious mistake, there's the feeling that the commander is both disappointed and quietly proud of him, unwilling to punish him, but not able to completely dismiss it either. The way Gregson deals with this is also very haunting, as are some of the more quiet moments when a last party is given before the rumored raid of the German air force occurs. I feel that this is a film that has so many key moments that it is a film that has to be viewed numerous times to fully appreciate, and that its moral lesson of every action these pilots commit be fully detailed and not just by the book (as Gregson is accused of knowing too much about without the actual experience of knowing what to do), and that every action has a consequence that can make a mission fail and thus cost many lives. In the fight for freedom, details like this are ones that are very important to stick to, and even the top officers must maintain some composure even in the worst of situations.

Angels One Five covers a lot of the same ground as the more lavishly produced Battle Of Britain. But the same story about just a very few defending the realm and so many owing their freedom and their very existence to this relatively small bunch of men and women. One thing I do have to point out is that the contribution made by the women working in the operation center.Jack Hawkins is a stern and resolute commander of a coastal Royal Air Force Base. He's got some strict standards of behavior, the strictest being for himself. The bulk of the film is concerning the arrival of a new pilot who doesn't near and endear himself to Hawkins by crashing a a new Hurricane fighter that he was ferrying to the base. John Gregson plays the new man and Hawkins assigns him to the operations center, the better for him to see a whole picture of their situation before flying.Gregson in his own way is stiff and formal, memorizing a whole book of regulations. But that's hardly a substitute for experience and common sense.Some aerial combat situations, but mostly this movie is about the day to life on the base and the attacks there on. In the best stiff upper lip tradition they follow what Horatio Nelson said about England expects every man (and woman) to do his duty.And so they did and rather gloriously.

This is a mildly interesting, low budget version of The Battle of Britain. But the fact that it doesn't include any real air action is a huge letdown. The filmmakers borrowed about six Hurricanes from the Portuguese air force, marked them up as British, and filmed them flying past the camera in various ways, taxiing and landing. That's about the extent of real footage for air action. The rest is done with studio shots of men in canopies. Well, not quite all. It's hard to understand why the producers couldn't get footage of air battles, apart from one shot of a half dozen contrails across the sky. Unimpressive. Especially noticeable was the lack of footage of German aircraft. In its place they used some truly embarrassing makeshift replacements, the very worst of which was a drawing of a handful of bombers from below with one fake bomb animated as falling from one of them--truly laughable. And it was used not once, but twice. A couple of models of Messerschmidts on wires were used to show German fighters coming in to attack, and a rather pitiful attempt was made at special effects to depict the downing of German aircraft, seen from the cockpit of British fighters. For a film whose very title indicates battles in the air, it is all very disappointing. The story is workable, if uninspired, leaving just the workings of the air defence system as the main interest in the film. The jaunty dialogue among flyers who in real life would be scared out of their wits was annoying.

John Gregson is Pilot Officer "Septic" Baird, newly assigned to an RAF Hurricane squadron at the beginning of the war. Jack Hawkins is the Commanding Officer of the base and assorted regulars make up the supporting cast in this tale of the Battle of Britain seen mostly from the ground.Gregson plays a familiar type -- plenty of courage and skill but callow and lacking in discipline. He cracks up on his first landing and is assigned to Operations. That's the room with the big flat board, presided over by a couple of officers who coordinate incoming information while WAAFS sit around the table and plot the position and movement of German raiders and British interceptor squadrons. Gregson gets pretty bored and scuttles off during the first air raid to shoot down an Me 110 but he botches the flight because he accidentally leaves his transmitter on and nobody could use that frequency.The other men are all jolly good types. They toss each other around during moments of boisterous relaxation and affably throw insults at one another. Gregson, though, is alienated and is on his own trip, so to speak. Hawkins is the sensible commander who tries to empathize. There's a nascent romance involved.If this film were to be made by Americans, you know who would have been interested in directing it? Howard Hawks. It isn't really VERY different from many of Hawks' movies about male solidarity -- "Air Force," for instance, which uses a similar plot and similar characters. The chief difference is that there isn't much sparkle in this boyish dialog, whereas Hawks would have been at pains to invite amusing contributions from cast and crew, then taken credit for the gags himself later. Not to argue that Gregson's integration into the group is the focus of the film. It has so many focuses that it lacks focus.It's interesting to have Gregson serve as a proxy for the audience as he's taken on a tour of Operations and introduced to the personnel and their jobs. Also innovative is the use of Hawker Hurricane instead of the more glamorous Spitfires. Hurricane were an older design, slower and clumsier looking, but there were more of them. Their principal task was attacking the bombers. The German fighters were left to the Spitfires whenever the proper arrangements could be made.There's little in the way of air combat until the last few minutes, and the Hurricanes are real enough but the German planes are all models and they look it. The ending will probably come as a surprise.Not a bad show.