Angel of the Skies - Battaglia nei cieli

I don't want to flame South African cinema. I've enjoyed several releases from there. I also love a good World War II flying movie. This one lost credibility with me.

I can forgive the CGI flight scenes that look like they came out of a game. Original planes from that period are far too rare and valuable to use to make a movie and special effects don't make a movie. The story makes the movie. Unfortunately the story is what let me down.

There is a phenomena called "suspension of disbelief" in a movie. Unfortunately they literally shot suspension of disbelief quite early. The cliché evil SS officer just blew it away. His actions were utterly illogical. His men didn't point out how his actions directly worked against the Third Reich winning the war.

The evil SS officer was the worst but it wasn't the only logical failure. Over and over I kept thinking "Why would they do that" and "What a wasted opportunity." I sincerely wish them better luck next time.

I watch a lot of war movies (especially with my dad). So don't think i'm against war films as i write this...

This was a horrible horrible movie. I don't even know where to start, the title sequence felt like it went on forever, with the same grainy film in a loop overlapping at what felt like a whole newspaper I had to read.

The visual effects were appalling. Felt like it was rushed by a 9th grader using 3D studio max for the first time.

The characters was one dimensional and the acting was just soooo soooo baaaaad.

The story was boring, after the first 15 min I lost interest.

And the sound..ARRRG the sound....The background sounds were out of place and repetitive. The voices in some scenes sounded as if it were re-dubbed.

The ONLY reason i'm giving it a rating of 2 out of 10, is that at least the costumes looked authentic.

Rather save your money and re-watch something brilliant like Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, The Pacific or We were soldiers.

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.

This is a South African made film about some of the former colonies men who volunteered their services to fight for Britain at the hour of her greatest need in the dark days of World War 2. Meet Captain Kirk (yes he is really called that) played by Nicholas Van Der Bijl, in a performance of varying degrees. He leads a motley crew of his fellow countrymen who use such vocabulary as 'cheerio' and 'filly' in reference to ladies. Anyway they are fighting for RAF, Bomber Command and have to go and bomb the bejesus out of Germany etc.

Well whilst over Germany they get shot and have to make an emergency landing and then decide to battle their way back to France and the safety of the British lines, this is set late in the war and Operation Overlord has already taken place so we are well past D Day. What happens next is the story of their journey.

Right, for war film buffs there are a few things wrong with this film, first off the planes are all CGI, which is not a problem as they are all done really well even the Mescherschmitts, with props that look real and proper smoke etc so well done there. Problem is these guys are flying during the day. By this stage of the war the USAAF were doing the daylight runs and the RAF were doing the night runs. And they had fighter escort in the latter stages when this is set and there are none here. They are also flying Liberators which were never deployed to bomb Bremen by the RAF as depicted here. Now you are doing CGI so you could have got a Lancaster or a Wellington even, but still never mind.

The acting is all quite good and the love interest in the shape of Kirky's beloved in good if underplayed Lillie Claire as the neglected and dutiful lover is actually really convincing. This does have its moments and is far from being a bad movie, but factual errors really annoy some people and it is not a real full on 'action fest' especially once the plane goes splat, but I still found a lot to actually like here, hence the rating. If factual errors annoy you then best to avoid, and it was originally released as 'Angel of the skies' in a reference to the plane and not the overblown title we have presented here.

Cardboard aircraft that do not even look real, poor acting and locations that are obviously not European. Certainly can tell it is a low budget film with no real dialogue, a total waste of viewing time!