SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Wow – where to begin? No point in starting with the story because there isn't one. We follow the very un-enigmatic John Mills (Peter) in yet another role in which he demonstrates zero star power or stage magnetism. He's in the Royal Air Force during the 2nd World War and we spend some time in his extremely boring company.The whole cast is full of bumbling English twits who have turned up in the RAF at the same time and speak in that ridiculous clipped English, so we get dialogue like "that was a cracking story" being delivered as "that was a crecking story". Ludicrous. The relationships with the women are extremely cold, a sign of the acting style of the time, but still not good. And what's with Douglass Montgomery (Johnny)? He looks exactly like Michael Redgrave (David) and had me fooled that Redgrave was playing two roles in the same film. There is also, of course, a blasted kid in the film. This one can't speak properly and needs to be removed from the set on every appearance. It's a disgrace.What makes people think this rubbish is good? I'd like to know what their problem is. Basically, don't watch this crap – I ended up gazing out of the window during many sections. It's total codswallop and serves no point. Yawn.

No battle scenes, no fist fights, no arguments, no car chases, no tears -- just a modest and nicely written script by Terence Rattigan directed with skill and restraint by Anthony Asquith and smoothly performed by seasoned British actors and some American performers you've never heard of.John Mills is a newly minted RAF pilot posted to Halfpenny Field in 1940. It's the Battle of Britain but they don't just throw him into the obsolete Blenheim bombers at the field. They first assign him to a desk because his flying talents are less than minimal.Mills becomes friends with one of his superiors, Michael Redgrave, and attends Redgrave's wedding party. Redgrave disappears a year later on a mission, leaving behind his widow, Rosamund John, and their child. Everyone takes Redgrave's death with polite matter-of-factness but the fact is wrenching and leaves Mills firmly convinced that marriage has no place in war. This, naturally, aborts his courtship of the cute snub-nosed Renee Asherson.Next, a horde of American B-17 crews descend upon Halfpenny Field and their brusque manner contrasts with the decorous English politesse. A good chance for the script to go wrong here. Make the Yanks a mob of bragging, drunken, womanizing jackasses who shout when they speak. At first it seems this is the way the story may go. Lieutenant Joe Friselli, Bonar Colleano, appears to fit the template -- but, no. His expansiveness has shrunk to acceptable proportions by the end and he has been thoroughly humanized by the stress and the associated grief of combat.The American we get to know best is Douglass Montgomery, a bomber pilot who first thrusts his face into Mills' dual-occupant room and looks like the kind of guy who could be a vampire or robot. But he turns out to be quiet, married, and sensitive -- enough so that Redgrave's widow is attracted to him and he to her, though nothing comes of it.I don't suppose we really need those familiar shots of soaring Spitfires and turret gunners chattering away at the nettlesome enemy fighters. What we witness is the results of those battles on the ground.And it's a pretty good story, about those results, an ensemble effort that succeeds.

This film is possibly my favorite film. Having seen it late at night on the ABC (Australian) I waited a year reading the television guide regularly until it was on again and taped it. I have since bought it on DVD. This is a brilliant look at the airmen based in Britain during WWII. It doesn't glorify the war or show one bomb dropping over Germany, but it glorifies the Men and Women who lived the times and suffered the war in a time when the fate of the world was uncertain. Touching and truthful. The cast are amazing and the script has a sense of humor which has long been associated with Britain in war times. the relationship between the English and Americans is at times funny when it comes to cultural differences, but as today the two countries stood together.

You have got to see this film, I saw it as a kid in Yorkshire, England where I live but did not appreciate it. until I saw it years later in my forties. But one line really stood out for me, been interested in the Apollo moon flights and spaceflight in general a character in the film says "...rockets, a thousands tons!" very prophetic, especially when you realise rockets weigh that much if not more. Been made in 1945 the largest rocket was the German A4/V2 which weighed about 25 tons. Guess who ever wrote the film had seen sight of The British Interplanetary Society's 'Journal' and Practical Mechanics from before the war.