The Worst Film Ever

Great Film overall

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

"Angel of the Skies" or "Wings of Honour" is a 100-minute movie from South Africa and so far the most known work by writer and director Christopher-Lee dos Santos. According to IMDb right now, the main language in here is German, but looking at the cast names and the fact that almost none of the characters in here are German I doubt this is correct. This film plays during World War II in its entirety pretty much and we follow a couple bomber pilots. The focus, however, is really just on one as we also find out about his background in terms of love, family, plans etc. The enemy's ruthlessness is depicted in some scenes as the bad guys kill an innocent woman for the sake of it. But it all felt relatively shallow and not too deep. I found this was a generic, stereotypical war movie that offered nothing that hasn't been done in other films already over the years. Then again, maybe I am a bit biased as I am not a fan of the genre at all. I usually care for the political schemes and figures, but rarely for the military and war action. And is this one here is packed with the latter, I never really developed any interest in it. Besides, I also felt that there were some scenes of severe overacting, especially by the actress who plays our hero's love interest. But the other actors, including the lead, weren't much better, even if they weren't overacting. So yeah, these areas that actually interest me were also not executed particularly well, so that I could say this makes up for the forgettable action scenes. All in all, this is a very mediocre product here and I hope the South African filmmaker I mentioned earlier can step things up in the future. He will have to in order to have a long and successful career in the industry. But I have hope as he is still pretty young. As for his work here, I don't recommend the watch. Thumbs down.

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. :))

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.

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.