Battle Over Britain

Battle Over Britain (2023)

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As the film says at the end "the characters and events depicted in this motion picture are fictitious any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental". Very brave to show this film, in the way done, as it truly shows the heroism these people showed against seemingly insurmountable odds. To continually jump in their planes and take to the skies against this presence, of might and power, is truly a showing of the British "Stiff upper lip". Bearing in mind over the previous year the "Germans" had seemingly vanquished the whole of Europe, I'm sure they felt Great Britain "that small island" would cave as well. What was so lovely about this was the camera angles, and shots made, in the sky. The German Luftwaffe "big planes" simply being overpowered up there as they couldn't turn in time to face the British "little planes, Spitfires" that just flew between and around them. Skies above GB recaptured by end October 1940, the Germans abandoning their attempt to secure those skies. As PM WC says "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed owed by so many to so few". Well said that man!

TL:DR - Boredom under budget EXT. FIELD, DAY. It doesn't matter if your supposedly historical drama gets all the facts wrong. All of them. It doesn't matter if you've only got one Spitfire. It doesn't matter if your airbase consists of garden centre shed in a field. It doesn't matter if your combat sequences were filmed with Microsoft Flight Simulator, or your soundtrack is off a CD called 'Generic Drama Themes vol XXIII'. What you absolutely must have is relatable characters in deep conflict. That doen't mean 'tropes during WWII', which is all you get from BOB. You also get a lot of nationalistic nonsense, which is disturbing if they mean it. Everyone ought to know by now that Nazi Germany called off operation Sea Lion (the invasion) partly because their invasion of Russia was due the next summer, and partly because they thought England was ready to negotiate peace. The narrative that Churchill 'won the war' was concocted by Churchill and the tory party to cover the loss of the British Empire. This film has a superannuated propaganda narrative, which makes its lack of plot even more annoying.

Sure, the plot was not on fire, but I was happy to follow along until I saw the same airframe belonging to the SL being handed to the newbie before being re-delivered by the ATA! Did you really only have 1 Spitfire to film? If so, was it really too much trouble to make them look different?! Many of the aerial battles lacked realism - did they really have HUD back then? (To be fair the actual sighting system was maybe hard to show.) I also thought the squadron was tiny - I mean, my garden shed is bigger than their squadron HQ. Not sure it was actually big enough for a game a darts. Anyway - there you go - over 600 chars of review.

At the beginning when the four Spitfires land after a sortie ,the only person there to greet them is one man in blue overalls ,who pokes around in a cockpit . In reality the planes would need refueling and re arming so they would be ready to take off again within 5mins. This would involve many men swarming around the planes as they stop! With a fuel bowser present and a least an Ambulance .We see no vehicles .We see one man ! Two men are later seen fiddling around with a tail rudder in the background! But NO refueling or re-arming! A short while later a Spitfire lands with a female pilot (with presumably a replacement aircraft) But it has exactly the same flight identification markings as the Spitfire the Skipper landed in a short time earlier ! Then they take off in a few minutes later without being re-armed or re-fueled ! And so it goes on !

There was possibly 0 actual research done about planes during WW2 by anyone on the production staff before they shot this movie... Which can be forgiven to some extent, because focus on the plot, right? But then, before I even reached a quarter of the way through, in THE MIDDLE OF AN AIR BATTLE, the leader of this squadron says, "That's enough, boys." and leads them home because one of their squad mates was shot down. Hello? This isn't a kickball game, it's war. You can't quit halfway through a mission, leaving your other allies to fight alone and letting the enemy escape because your mate was offed. Did a 4 year-old write this script?

This film was made on a budget but to be fair that isn't a criticism. I found it interesting that they did a different more human take on the Battle of Britain. I liked the cgi air battle scenes especially the view using the rear view mirror with the flashes of gunfire zipping past them. There were a few little errors but that's me being too critical. Personally I liked the stories of the pilots and it showed how they were coping or dealing with the pressures that they were under. This "ordinary" men did extraordinary things often at the cost of their lives. In its way this film pays tribute to them and gives a nod to the ATA and their role.

I try to watch every war movie out there, and most of them are ok - even the low budget ones make an attempt at plot, CGI, and action: this one does none of the above. -Week to no plot; -Minimal if any use of CGI; -"Battle over Britain"? I never saw any battles; The cockpit death scenes are unconvincing: where's the blood? How did the pilots get shot? In one scene we simply see a splash of crimson, done. The movie blatantly uses the same tired aircraft over and over - check out the registration of the "new delivery" Spitfire if you don't believe me. Plus the movie has the same arial clips over and over. Don't waste your time on this garbage. Spitfire exploitation I call it. The producers are taking advantage of the plethora of rebuilt war planes out there, which is great - but this movie ain't.

Filmed and produced on a budget of 10 shillings and 6 pence, this utter load of rubbish is a disgrace and a slap in the face of real WWII veterans who fought and died in the conflict. Actors who have no idea of period acting, aircraft straight out of an X-box game, the combat sequences are ridiculous and the use of a garden shed for a flight dispersal defies belief. Background extras walking about wearing odd bits of uniforms, the whole film is complete farce. How anyone can take this level of amateur filmmaking seriously is beyond belief, whoever rated this higher than 2 stars must have been watching something completely different. This is not a film for watching, it's a film for bypassing and avoiding...