Gripping story with well-crafted characters

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

I love Harrison Ford and I love Christopher Plummer and I love romance and love triangles, so I was predisposed to love this film. Unfortunately, I couldn't. The romance is very stilted, the dialogue is diabolical, too much attention is paid to trivial things (such as Harrison being told off by his boss for his attitude - completely irrelevant to the plot) and not enough is paid to the important stuff - why do the characters fall for each other? Apart from the first two minutes, she seems uptight and tearful all the time, and he doesn't say much at all. I also couldn't understand why she was having an affair in the first place as her homelife seemed unbelievably happy and her husband uncommonly lovely - I'd trade him for my husband any day! My favourite part was just watching Plummer, but the rest was woefully dull and unbelievable.

Any comments I include will not have enough info to ruin the movie. Myself, I don't like to read reviews with spoilers because I don't want to know how a movie ends before I see it.I gave this an 8 because of the way it moved me. Some will find fault with details but that was not what I came for. I came to see a movie that portrayed what it was like to be alive in the 1940's and this did not disappoint. It starts out a bit sarcastic regarding some Americans who are based in England flying bombing raids on Germany installations in France. An American pilot has a chance meeting with an English woman during a very terrifying bombing raid. Something clicked between them. The fear, the excitement, loneliness, who knows. But it pushed them together in a way that would never have happened otherwise.Maybe you had have been in the military to understand and appreciate the bantering between the servicemen. It made me laugh. Maybe you had to hear older folks talk about how horrible it was to have the whole world at war. That was scary because back then you did NOT know how it was going to turn out. Maybe you had to have been IN a war with real shooting for your guts to shrivel up when the shooting starts in the movie. Until you have been shot at with real bullets you do NOT know what it does to you. When our heroes walked into a Nazi headquarters I could feel my skin crawl. Later when they were running for their lives I could feel myself getting more tense by the second.The English woman and the American become so deeply attached they keep telling themselves they should stop meeting but they can't imagine life without each other. Later her husband and her lover end up in Nazi occupied France on a very important secret mission and have to depend on each other to survive.There is sweet romance, terror, laughter, and thrills.It gave me goosebumps to see the old airplanes lined up on the runway, droning their engines. Knowing that not long ago men boarded planes like those and gallantly flew off to risk their lives so others could live free.Very few people younger than 75 years of age know what it was like to live through that war so it is not likely they will get as deep into this movie as I did. Even though I was born after the war, I have heard numerous relatives talk about what it was like. Rationing of tires, gasoline, sugar, flour, all the things we take for granted. There was even a drive on for people to put their left over grease from cooking in containers. That was used to make numerous things, most of all gun powder. Many people had black out restrictions meaning if you lived near any important installations, your windows had to be covered so no light was showing.The stories my relatives told helped me truly grasp what it was like to live back then. The soldiers, sailors, and a couple of air force members helped me feel what they lived through and I will always be grateful to them for their dedication, and perseverance. This movie does a fair job of showing that if you can imagine yourself IN the movie, living through what is being depicted.I somehow missed this movie till just tonight. I saw it by chance at a video rental store. I very much like both Christopher Plummer and Harrison Ford. I plan to watch it again before I return it in five days.

Harrison Ford approaches Leslie Anne Down with a funny line."Do you know how to get to Buckminster Castle?" This has always struck me as funny.To me, that is a meme that ought to enjoy wider hilarity.On the whole this was a very forgettable movie.It wasn't bad, it just wasn't very compelling.It seemed to only be marking time, and perhaps banking on Harrison Ford's new stardom in the Star Wars mess.The writer/director Peter Hyams has made some films worthy enough to merit attention."2010: The year we make contact" a sequel to 2001: "A Space Odyssey" was decent."Outland" with Sean Connery was pretty riveting.One thing that seems to run consistent is that the scripts are pretty lackluster.As always, and as it should be, writing drives any story-telling vehicle.

This film has many great elements, but the whole things fails primarily due to overwrought dialogue that is very soap operatic with words put in character's mouths that mostly teenage girls would think of. Without John Barry's romantic score, this film would be pathetic, leaning towards hilarious.In any film, when two characters meet and fall in love there is a certain amount of time and shared experiences that pass in the story before the love between them is credible. In this film, the love is instant, deeply romantic -- yet torrid, and lasting. Completely impossible! Having said all that, the film still provides some great military movie sequences. There are some funny bits with Halloran and his co-pilot Cimino mouthing off during their missions and briefings. And a whole military caper pulled off by Halloran (Ford) and Mr. Sallinger (Plummer) which is both exciting and easy to follow.After a while, one realizes that Margaret Sallinger, (Down) never speaks her lines, she whispers them in a plaintive, teary voice, always on the verge of boo-hoo. This becomes grating after a while. Further, it makes the audience wonder what Halloran sees in her.Well, the answer to what the attraction is never comes, but the noble dialogue at the end is a struggle to listen to and is a riff on the immortal Casablanca "Hill of beans/Here's lookin' at you" farewell between Rick and Ilsa. It is well that this Hanover Street high-road sign-off sequence comes last as it is the most indulgent in melodrama. Still, Ford and Plummer work so effectively to make this movie almost passable that you really have to give them credit for their commitment to their characters.