Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

The 109's were not marked correctly. The theater bands should be white not yellow. Yellow bands are for the eastern front. The bombers were not marked correctly also. The markings were for 8th Air Force. The maintainers were falsely represented. I'm a retired Air Force maintainer and I've done a few tours in the sand box. I don't care if it's -50 or 150 degrees we work the aircraft. I've done 8hr shifts and I've done 48 hour plus shifts. The only thing that's acceptable is fix the bird.

This is a watchable WW2 film, not bad at all, like said in other reviews there are some issues where you can tell they are in front of a green screen. The acting is acceptable and the film has less action than I expected but was still entertaining. One minor gripe I have with this film is the look of the colors, they were just to bright and clean. These soldiers were in the middle of the desert and everything was brightly colored, there should be sand everywhere and clothing dingy along with the planes themselves, they looked just to new to be continuously worked on and repaired. Overall I liked it, maybe some of it is because I am currently reading a book on WW2 bombers which is why I did lean towards watching this film.

For the budget, they did a great job of storytelling, the crews that flew these (like my uncle and cousin, out of a base in England) are the story, not the celebrities who play the roll, or some romance sub plot, not the tech quality of special effects, or specific historical accuracy. My wife and i were party to the making of Pearl Harbor via National Park Svc work, and we had the honor to get to know actual survivors, we were sometimes surprised by there stories an by their reactions to certain details of that movie. We enjoyed that movie more by hearing the survivors comments.I thank the makers of Fortress for making this little movie that tells a fraction of the story of some great young men who deserve to be honored. I think the old flight crews would have appreciated the story as told. (and you guys likely made this for a fraction of the cost of Disney's world premier party for PH, and got to tell the tale to a few more people who may never view another B17 plot).

All right, fellas, listen up. Sit down. Smoke 'em if you got 'em. Today's mission maybe looks like a milk run to you. All that we need to do is have a CGI pageant. But I'm afraid most of you won't make it back.The computer-generated images are just plain splendid. Dozens of colorful and detailed B-17Fs fill the blazing blue sky. The crew are flying out of Algiers and their targets are in Italy. The film opens with a hazardous run in which the bombers are attacked by zipping Me-109s and casualties are incurred. It ends with another mission over Rome itself and the results are catastrophic.I don't know why it doesn't hang together but frankly the CGIs are about the only thing the production has going for it, and even those could be improved on. Not the images themselves; they're crisp. But the way they're used by the director. Whoever decided that the airplane on the screen must fly at high speed, nose first into the camera? How did this become a tradition? With "Pearl Harbor"? It's so jarring and distracting that it's passed far beyond its sell-by date.Another problem, and a serious one, is the acting. The performers seem drawn from some obscure afternoon TV series. It's difficult to tell one from another. Bug Hall is noticeable because he has a peachy role -- the newcomer who must be integrated into the crew. (Cf., Hawks' "Air Force".) Chris Owen, the chief engineer and master brewer, stands out because he looks like a slightly malformed Benedict Cumberbatch. The musical score of Gaelic-sounding melodies is lifted from "Memphis Belle" and "We Were Soldiers."Almost all the actors sound as if they were raised in Los Angeles or its indistinguishable suburbs. I realize they weren't but, as much as we don't need another re-run of the crew of "The Memphis Belle," NOBODY HAS AN ACCENT. Of course fewer people have regional accents now. We're all beginning to speak Network English. But in 1943, regional dialects could pin you down to a single city, and in some cases a few blocks in that city. But neither the writer nor anyone else appears to have spent much effort on the speech or the dialog. Anachronistic expressions include, "Roger that," and "I need you to (do something)." The usual clichés are used, elements drawn from every combat film.. New co-pilot to pilot: "Do you ever feel you're living on borrowed time?" Pilot: "Every second of every day." Eg., "Flying Leathernecks." Young pilot to John Wayne: "Don't tell me YOU'RE scared too!" Wayne: "Every time I go up." "The flak is so heavy you can walk on it." (Twice.) "I'm not in a popularity contest." The writers missed a few rituals -- "mail call" and the romantic triangle. But they did manage to squeeze in the part about the crew building a still and making jungle juice. In fact, when these guys aren't flying, they drink enough booze to stun an elephant and the next day they fly as if nothing had happened.See it if you want, but I have a feeling that once you're into it you'll realize you've seen most of it before in one isomorphism or another.