Angel of the Skies

I just started laughing at this film about half way through and after that I just couldn't take it seriously. The flight of bombers without fighter escort gets jumped by about twenty Me 109s and they can't shoot down a single bomber, in fact a couple of 109s get shot down instead. Total BS, in any engagement if this kind the bombers would be lucky not to lose half their squadron. Then when they crash and take refuge in the barn the German woman they find goes over to their side. Hint Director, they are in Germany not France. You have just been bombing her country and she is suddenly pro British. I can't go on further because at this point I switched off. Complete waste of time. If you are going to make a war fim at least get the audience to believe that it possibly could happen. This was the equivalent of someone falling from a tall building and saving himself by grabbing the ledge two floors below. That kind of thing is for five year olds. The acting was also awkward and stilted, on the one side they tried to reproduce the attitudes and culture of the time but then threw in swearing which belonged in a Vietnam era film. On the whole I thought it was total nonsense and a waste of time.It belongs in the 99c bin at K Mart.

DVD Review from Technology Tell Magazine by Steve Anderson. There are certain breeds of movie that we don't see often. Science fiction and Westerns commonly top the list, but war movies are also frequently spotted in attendance. Our friends out at Entertainment One, meanwhile, look to fix that with "Angel of the Skies," a movie that takes another look at World War II, this time through the aviators' eyes. "Angel of the Skies" follows Earl Kirk, a South African man who leaves his pregnant fiancée to go fight in World War II as part of the Royal Air Force. There's no shortage of fighting left to go, and eventually Kirk is shot down along with his crew, forced to parachute into occupied territory. Now, the handful of men who escaped death in the skies must set out on foot, dodging a vicious SS officer who will go to any lengths to finish the job his countrymen started in the sky. The good thing about "Angel of the Skies" is its wonderfully immersive quality. This feels like a look at the war, in this era, and at this point in time. It's deliriously authentic; it's like being there. It's the next best thing to actually being there. But this immersive nature also means the movie sacrifices a lot in the way of action, particularly in the early going. I don't believe I heard a shot fired in anger for the entirety of the first half hour, and that's a bit of a lag. Considering the movie only packs around 100 minutes to its name, losing roughly a third of those to a gunshot-free existence is a tough road to hoe. Still, the further good news is that once it gets started, it gets started in earnest. There's more than its share of action, with a good bit of suspense tossed in for extra fun. It's always good when a genre movie can toss in elements of other genres–action blends with suspense or horror, comedy blends with action or a Western, and so on. "Angel of the Skies" does a fine job of mixing, and gives us a wonderful synthesis. War buffs, you'll not be disappointed, and action buffs in general, this is a fine slice of cinematic action. Special features include a trailer for "Angel of the Skies," a set of audio options and English subtitles. Though it takes a while to get started, "Angel of the Skies" will do a very nice job overall. A slow start isn't near enough to cut the tension that will be sparked throughout this one, and the whole thing will make an excellent addition to the roster of war movies out there.

I have studied history for decades, especially WWII military history and the air war even more so. When it comes to historically prescient speeches, I'm starting to think that Marlon Brando's speech where he warned of Hollywood's portrayal of nothing-but-stereotypes is the film version of Dwight Eisenhower's famous warning about the U.S. military- industrial complex. Well, with globalization, the stereotype industry has clearly reached South Africa. It's a real pity, too, because as a former radar operator I appreciated the genuine-sounding dialogue of the flight crew. But after the characters land on the ground, the realism becomes garbage. When the stereotypically-evil SS officer ordered a civilian German woman to be summarily shot for no reason, I could not continue watching. German officer saw their role as protecting Germans, as all military men do. Yes, the SS were fanatical Nazis.. that didn't mean they killed German civilians for fun. These film makers seem to know or care little of history, whereas I do, because as I like to say, those who know nothing of history are condemned to repeat it. (Yes, that's my line. :))

I was interested to learn that we have a South African World War 2 movie making its world premiere at the 2013 Durban International Film Festival in South Africa. Now, the thing with most war movies, and in particular those depicting the Second World War, is that they show the brutality of that dark period in human history, and through that brutality weave in an element of optimism and hope. This is exactly what I expected when I sat down to view Christopher-Lee Dos Santos' Angel of the Skies. Dos Santos' movie contained all the elements that make war movies good and enjoyable, including a clearly defined hero and the beautiful woman he leaves at home in order to fight for the honour and glory of his country, along with, above all, the ruthless Germans who kill with little, if any, pity. The opening credits for Angel in the Skies are nostalgic, all very 1940s. The screen is illuminated in glorious black and white, with newspaper articles from the period. The wonderful credits, though, were instantly shot down by the poorly executed opening sequence showing a couple of aircraft engaged in a dogfight. It was poorly animated compared with scenes that followed. Dos Santos made many more questionable decisions in making his film, including bad accents (and actors) topped with horrible special effects, all ultimately done in by a weak script. On several occasions, the pace of the film dragged. Numerous scenes just did not do anything to progress the narrative or help develop the characters – even more so when it's a gratuitous sex scene. The plot of the movie is that during the height of the conflict, when Britain declares war on Germany, a South African pilot, flight Lieutenant Officer Earl Kirk volunteers to serve in the Royal Air Force, leaving behind his pregnant fiancée to protect and serve the British Empire. However, while flying over Europe, the Germans shoot down the plane he and his crew are flying. They land on German soil. Action dominates the film's romantic narrative. At one point I had completely forgotten that a fiancée back home had been introduced. Apart from its opening credits, the film's only vaguely redeeming feature was the score.

Angel of the Skies stands alone in its study of Commonwealth air crew. It lacks the bravado of other productions but certainly in the first half of the film, that worked for me. The aerial sequences are credible and who's to say that the rather muted and relatively calm interchanges of the crew are not representative. The second part of the film worked less well and it all looked a little two dimensional and predictable. Characters were not developed enough in this context and the viewer doesn't care enough. A couple of points of accuracy pointed out by others here. I'm pretty sure that they are not Liberators, but Halifax bombers. Not as famous as the Lancaster, but certainly a stalwart of Bomber Command. Also, although it is very true that the RAF left the vast majority of Daylight Raids to the US B17s, Halifax bombers did fly in the day, particularly towards the end of the war on a few precision raids.

If you've quite finished with your special effects............. I'd like my Commodore64 back

Just watched this on the TV. Interesting storyline let down by poor research and immature psychological insight, silly stereotyping and stilted dialogue script. Initially I thought the acting a bit wooden. Slowly each of the main characters idiosyncrasies grew on me until they became almost believable characters and worthy of the "Actor" job-description. The exceptions were the girlfriend of the main protagonist and a truly SSified SS officer. She; really quite irrelevant to the story. He; relevant but preposterous. Why, in the 21st Century, did the director decide to have a German SS officer who came from the same mould Hollywood production lines fabricated in the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's...? The man who played "SS offizer" wasn't even any good at acting a simple 2D stereotype. Bomber flight formations were good even if the CGI was a bit naff, though one can't be too picky as the producers certainly wouldn't have had a Spielberg or Cameron budget (and they can create disastrously bad films costing tens to hundreds of millions., ie., , Titanic, Avatar, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, Jurassic Park series). The plot would have been better served with less time in the air and more time on enemy occupied ground as terrorfliegers cautiously avoiding the wrath of a heavily bombed people and SS Panzer division. The girlfriend (story) could easily have been ditched with no loss, and the cardboard cutout SS officer spun into a more credible human being. Which, frankly, is what I'd hoped the film would be like when I read the TV schedule description.

Navigating through heavy flack despite the fact that they appear to be flying across a mountain range,the crew of an RAF Liberator,a multi - national mix of English,American and South African aircrew with dodgy accents,conduct a terse conversation in 21st century media - speak. It sounds as if it had been texted from the writer's smartphone. Having miraculously evaded the attentions of numerous toy 109s they then rather carelessly crash "Somewhere in Germany" having lost their rear gunner who fell out of a hole in the fuselage someone made earlier. This poor chap was then shot by a passing SS officer instead of being captured and interrogated for useful information which would have rather spoiled the point about Germans being nasty buggers all round and likely to be dangerous to the health of any RAF types stooging around Hunland looking for a trip back to Blighty. Sheltering in a passing barn - as it were - our heroes,under the command of Captain Kirk(I couldn't believe it either)encounter a comely farmer's daughter who tells them "The Germans are down the road",which,as she is German herself,seems a little bizarre,textually,but never mind. Our heroes run off and lo and behold the SS Officer from a bit earlier has the girl shot before chasing after them. Eventually only the brave South African survives to return to Blighty and save the Empire with scarcely a twitch of his moustache. 50 years later Apartheid came to an end. Possibly those two events were connected. But then again,possibly not. "Angel of the skies" was made in 2013.Presumably by two 12 - year - olds on their dad's old Apple. It is the worst war film I have ever seen and that includes "Escape to Athena".Think about that.

First the good. It is good that digitalisation, CGI & straight to DVD is making low budget film making more possible. This inevitably means more films, some of poor quality. The writing & general production values of this film are not at all bad. There has been a plethora of poor WW2 films on the market lately. This is not one of them. This is more war drama than war action film & any prospective viewer should bear this in mind. The film is informative about the strains, stresses & foibles of the young men sent to bomb Germany. Others have commented on the unlikelihood of a joint RAF/US daylight bombing raid. Night war action seldom excites on film. So perhaps we can afford the film maker some poetic licence. The main air action sequence is pretty good. It is also good that young white South Africans should cast about for what to be proud of in their recent history, just like Germany's postwar generation has had to do. Both generations live under the shadow of twin evils - Nazism & Apartheid. Innumerable German films have dealt with the German opposition to Nazism. Now we have young white South Africans recounting the tale of young white South Africans fighting Nazism in WW2. The decision to use the SS rather than regular Wehrmacht underlines how evil Nazism was. One could be cynical and say the anti-Nazi heroics of a few can hardly make up for the decades of injustice under Apartheid which followed victory in 1945. But that is not the point. We are talking about post-Nazi & post-Apartheid generations who bear no responsibility for the previous evils of their countries. It is good that a story like the one portrayed in this film can be seized upon by young South Africans, white & black, to show they have a common story of opposing racism & oppression - but in different times & different places. Now the bad. The South African actors used in the film struggle with the British accent. The portrayal of the SS is too clichéd but does add a dramatic tension which is otherwise rather lacking. The British soldiers appear rather too spic & span for troops who have been fighting their way across France since D-Day.

The cinematography at times verged on acceptable but the acting never even approached this level, not even close. I found it hard to empathise with any of the characters because I couldn't suspend the belief in the acting. It's hard to know if the writer, director or actors are to blame as one of the constant annoyances was a guaranteed WWII cliché of dialogue every minute or so that simply grated. The accents were simply laughable and removed any sense of authenticity. As some of the other reviews have noted, the background sound design is obviously looped and this gets boring quickly. The CGI was also basic, which in some cases can be charming, in this case however it just looked cheap. I didn't finish watching this movie, I wouldn't recommend you start.