shakercoola With a budget in the region of £149m in today's money, Battle of Britain was a huge production with a galaxy of international stars. The aerial sequences are riveting, the action compelling. There isn't a great deal of character development and it is flat in parts, and the score is platitudinous, but this is a copper-bottom action film and Guy Hamilton was an accomplished technician and the man to turn to in this genre in the early 1970s. There's no getting away from the telling of events as they occurred and they had to honour the real pilots and ground staff who gave their lives to the cause, so it's laden with acton. The film is generally faithful to real events and it has a relatively upbeat tone given the subject matter which I suppose helps due to its 2hs 13mins length. No epic retellings should be of shorter duration. I'd avoided watching the film for years, probably because of what I 'd perceived as a grainy film stock but recent releases improve the quality and even so, I now think the dated feel adds to the spectacle.

torgulsmith-225-355486 So everyone else's comments, yes. But how about the funny bits? "Repeat please?" "Private polish chit chat", and "thanks awfully, old man", oh, and "get your hands up you Nazi bastard"Then there's the special effects. Obviously there's the explosions apparently achieved by scratching the negative. And of course the fishing line on the Stuka crashing into the chain home station. But my two favorites are the attack on the French airfield and the he 111 with the dangling string. In the airfield sequence, there's a strafing sequence when one Me comes straight at the camera, hurricane explodes, another me goes right to left, but the charges meant to show staging fire are reversed, so as the approaching me fires, the crossing charges fire, and so on.Then there's the he 111 with the tether. So they got a great shot of the large scale model 111 plunging into the channel, but the tether is still attached to the model for some reason? So they add in a shot of "control cables" snapping, to explain!

Gatorman9 The usual problem with war movies (and television as well) that are supposed to be about air combat is that the action sequences you really tuned in to see routinely take a back seat a preponderance of typically hokey ground-based melodrama. If that kind of thing disappoints you, then THIS is the movie you want to watch.The makers of this film "got it", turning the usual paradigm around 180 degrees. In THE BATTLE OF Britain, the action comes FIRST, literally from the opening frame, and man, is there ever action. No one has ever come even remotely close to making a movie so packed with air combat action, and best of all, has done it so well. For viewers used to old 1940's vintage airwar movies with their usual panoply of obvious miniature models, soundstage rear-projection shots, and clearly artificial early special effects, you are in for a real treat. Never, not even in TORA, TORA, TORA (much less the comparatively sugar-coated MEMPHIS BELL), have such a collection of vintage aircraft been brought together to reenact aerial combat for video. Nothing else has really ever even come close. There is no CGI here, and whatever miniatures or animation were necessary in some spots the fact is that the innumerable aerial combat sequences are completely dominated by actual period aircraft in flight -- dozens and dozens of period aircraft in actual dogfights and other combat flight maneuvers. One gets the impression that half the film's budget could have spent on aviation fuel alone. And with that material to work with, neither do the cinematographers or the sound effects people or even the music department disappoint (and for my money, the British theme is the best piece of music ever composed to glorify flying). Not only is the movie jam-packed from end to end with essentially authentic aircraft in flight, but the photography makes the most out of it, with countless exciting, full-color shots of carefully choreographed combat sequences. Moreover, if you are already familiar with the storyline -- i.e., if you know your history of the early years of World War II -- then the narration is fairly brilliant in its rapid-paced, economical, nuanced approach to hitting all the high points of the war generally at that time and the Battle of Britain in particular. In that sense, I would give very high marks to the screenplay. Unfortunately, however, if you DON'T know your history of these events, no one but the quickest thinkers are likely to catch on to so much of what's going on here, and if the movie has a significant failing, that is it. The plot, such as it is, can be quite a muddle to the uninitiated. And while some reviewers were unimpressed with the ground-side melodrama here, I think that is at most a secondary complaint, and I personally did not find that oppressive in the least, but rather, appropriate to the subject matter and sufficiently subdued that it never threatens to dominate the movie. To the contrary, at least it gives the non-history buff something readily understandable and it also includes some humorous anecdotes as well. One thing I used to think about this movie is that nothing like this would ever be made again, and yet, here recently (as of January 2016) it has come out that some one is putting together a remake. God knows what it might look like. The original features such a great cast of English heroic actors (Sir Lawrence Olivier, Robert Shaw, Trevor Howard, Michael Caine, Kenneth More, etc., etc.) that it is hard to see how anyone can equal much less top that today, and one anticipates that whatever CGI they decide to use won't equal using real airplanes, either. Well, at least we still have a high-quality DVD of this. lol.

denis888 Very much like The Longest Day, this excellent war epic drama portrays not one hero or even a family, but a whole range of various British, German, French, Polish and other people who either took part in the battle, or was a witness to these terrible events. The cast is awesome, just to mention Sir Laurence Olivier, younger Michael Caine or excellent Curt Jürgens among many. All the roles are smaller, minor, they all serve the bigger and grander aim to show people amidst the bloodshed and chaos. The film serves this aim perfectly. Very well done, very realistic, very straight, honest and fast, it shows the sheer horror of a war and how fragile we all are. I am saddened by the fact that the film was a flop, it is a war Masterpiece and Must be watched very diligently. It is not a propaganda film, or a period piece. It got one message, clear and true - war is evil. The film is made very well, it shows people as they are - weak, cowardly, brave, strong, ready to die, dying, being futile, being useful. This is a very good document that must be rehabilitated and restored to its due High place.