Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Excellent but underrated film

Absolutely the worst movie.

Absolutely Fantastic

I am surprised I haven't run across this one before discovering it recently on-line. What most of the other reviews have said is true. The bombing sequence at the end of the movie has a documentary quality to it readily evoking MEMPHIS BELLE -- not the disappointing 1990 movie, but the 1944, William-Wyler-directed wartime documentary released by the United States Army Air Forces during the war itself. It is also a highly detailed treatment that illuminates the RAF's night-time area bombing tactics far beyond else ever dramatized. By the same token, the entire rest of the film tends to be a straightforward representation of what it was like for participants in that phase of the war, remarkable as a movie for its minimization of histrionics. It deserves at least a bare minimum of a 7 on IMDb.

I had seen this film when I was in school where it was shown as part of educational films screened by one of my schoolmasters who had himself served in the Royal Indian Air Force in Burma.Today I own a copy on DVD. The exploits of people in Bomber Command is brought out with extreme accuracy to the screen by creating an atmosphere that is taut and realistic. Dirk Bogarde gives one of his best performances as the Wing Commander who is definitely cracking under the stress of command but does not want to accept it. The scenes where he gives Bryan Forbes a dressing down will certainly strike a chord where his sense of responsibility to the team is exposed. The accuracy of operations of RAF Bombers during night sorties right from the point of take off, to the tension of the ground staff till their return is brilliantly photographed. There are no clichés or extended heroics quite common in similar films but dark realism of survival during the war with the atmosphere of the airfields and aircrew intact. Being the son of an Air Force officer who did some war service in India the realism is striking. I would certainly recommend it to the younger viewers who need to study such situations.

We don't get to see that many movies about Bomber Command, though there are a goodly number of Eighth Air Force movies around. I guess American studios poured out more war movies but in the 1950s the Brits produced some hum dingers as well, and this is one of them.It bears some slight resemblance to "Twelve O'Clock High" in its structure. The men are convinced their squadron is jinxed and Bogarde must snap them out of it. Lots of tense ground scenes with the full story of a bombing raid over Germany saved until the end. And, like Gregory Peck, Dirk Bogarde is a pilot who has "done his share of flying" and is now a ground officer, enforcing discipline on the men. In an emergency, he climbs aboard a Lancaster for his final mission -- number ninety. When the Master Bomber, who acts as a kind of coach during the raid, is shot down, Bogarde takes over and saves the day. The appointment in London involves decorations for some of the men, to be awarded at Buckingham Palace. The role of Squadron Commander, though, really belongs to someone like Jack Hawkins, who can convey both empathy and necessity. Bogarde is stern enough but brings a slightly personal, bitchy quality to the role. As usual, the officers and men are a mixed group of Brits, Australians, and whatever people from Sheffield are called. There is an American major who slouches around, hands in pockets, wearing a big smile, acting as liaison officer to the RAF. He risks court martial by sneaking aboard on some raids and acting as tail gunner. You're likely to recognize him as the guarded Dr. Floyd in Kubrick's "2001." There are a couple of women too: a widow who is the object of rival affections, and a widow who generates sympathy. There is also the usual grabass in the mess hall, a kind of riot in which officers mark the ceiling with the inky prints of their bare feet. It's all rather good natured fun.The final raid is shown from its planning stages until the landing of the last overdue Lancaster. It's pretty tense. Bogarde is aboard one of the planes and the dramatic structure could go either way.I suspect that there may be more movies about the Americans' daylight precision bombing than about the British night-time area bombing partly because more combat footage is available from daylight missions. Of course, until fighters with sufficient range became available, daylight bombing meant unsustainable losses and the program was suspended for a while. The British program didn't do much better. Their losses were appalling. And the metric doesn't exist that would allow us to measure the airmen's suffering against that of the Germans beneath them. All the combatants took a terrific pummeling. War is an awful thing. One wonders why some of us seem so anxious to rush into the next one.

This is an unusual film. As others have commented it is well made, tautly scripted and has very good central performances. But that isn't what singles it out.It's commonly thought that night time area bombing by the RAF was a hit or miss affair, quite different from daylight precision bombing done by the USAAF. Whilst no one can argue that targets were easier to see during daylight hours, both the RAF and the Luftwaffe developed highly accurate methods of hitting their targets at night. In the fateful Dresden raid in February 1945, almost 95% of the RAF bombload fell within one mile of the markers placed with 50 metre accuracy by the Mosquito target illuminator aircraft. The following day, a quarter of the American daylight force sent to follow up bombed Prague, having mistaken one bend in the River Elbe for another. This film depicts, at length, the method of target marking the flight path using coloured airburst flares, eliminating 'creepback' by approaching the target along different vectors, air and ground marking the target and using a 'Master Bomber' to control the incoming streams and give bomb aimers feedback on accuracy.No medal was struck for Bomber Command and many of the crew themselves felt their contribution was best forgotten, so this film is one of the few accurate testaments to their courage.