Dark Blue World

Dark Blue World

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DVD Reviews of Dark Blue World

DVD Review: Dark Blue World
Summary: 4 Stars

It's during one of these "shooting down" sequences that one of our pilots, Karel, meets Susan played by Tara Fitzgerald. The obligatory love interest. Fitzgerald is a potential war widow, whose husband has been feared lost in the Atlantic, with the Navy. The pilot, the younger of the two, falls instantly for the older woman and becomes besotted by her. This is where the friendship of the two Czech pilot's is severely tested as later the older pilot, Franta, falls for Fitzgerald too who in turn falls in love with him. Complicated.......yeah?

The love distraction doesn't really interfere with the run of the film too much and the action sequences more than make up for there lack of pace, but I'm I the only person whose sick of filmmakers dispersing petty love stories into war movies? They usually don't work very well.

There are flaws though. I would have liked to see more of the Battle of Britain section and the hardships endured by fighter command in the summer of 1940 and the later war years are inserted without any real knowledge of what period of the war we're in. Another technical flaw is the camouflage of the spitfires doesn't change throughout the war, they remain in the 1940 pattern of green and brown when they should have been painted green and gray after 1941. The flashback sequences of Franta, from a Soviet forced-labour camp after the war, doesn't really work as a framing device, but it does introduce us to some interesting characters such as an SS doctor which Slava shares his prison with. The SS doctor is presented as a man and not the usual cardboard nazi monster of Hollywood movies. It's quite refreshing to see. Also at the beginning, the Czech pilots talk about flying to Poland and helping them. However, I very much doubt that any Czechs would have flown North to Poland as antagonisms between Poland and Czechoslovakia were still very strong from the polish seizing of the Teschen region of Czechoslovakia in the late '30s. But the flaws are small when placed into the whole film and only someone with an above average interest in World War II will notice them. There is one problem with DVD presentation of the film though. It's to do with the subtitling of the movie itself. The DVD will allow you to have the subtitles either on or off, in other words the English captions are onscreen even when the English speaking characters are speaking English. This can be very annoying and very distracting. Its also quite lazy of the DVD's manufacturer as the English captions can easily be turned off when English is being spoken onscreen.

Overall, if you like war movies and especially war movies based on aircraft and air warfare, then you will like "Dark blue world". It certainly blows some recent war movies out of the water and is entertaining in its own right. The subject matter is one you will probably not see onscreen again and the 1940 atmosphere is presented perfectly, as is the difficulties in trying to blend foreign volunteers into a generally mono-ethnic combat force. The acting from everyone concerned is spot-on and Charles Dance fits in as an airfield commander.

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