GamerTab
That was an excellent one.
Arianna Moses
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
ma-cortes
Interesting War drama taken from British point of view . Spectacular and colorful WWI airplane movie with an enjoyable casting and breathtaking aerial battles . Splendid aerial scenes stunningly staged , being wonderfully photographed by Gerry Fisher and adequate musical score by Richard Hartley are the chief assets of this enjoyable film . In WW1 the high casualty rate among the rookie pilots of the Royal Flying Corps puts an enormous strain on the survivors . Pilots shooting down enemy planes but also suffering a lot of war losses . They carry out attacks on balloons that were extremely dangerous because machine guns and antiaircraft guns formed a protective circle beneath the balloons . Therefore pilots dived at a steep angle when they attacked , they did not attack horizontally . High above the trenches 14 days is a long life...This is the 15th day! Spectacular dogfighting , interesting dramatics , overwhelming scenarios , top-drawer cast , agreeable interpretations bring to life attractive roles though tend toward cliché . Nice aerial sequences directed by Derek Cracknell but drama on the ground does a little boring . R.C. Sheriff's classic play about life in the trenches was reworked as a drama of fliers in the Royal Flying Corps by screen-writer Howard Barker . As the setting is transplanted from the trenches to an airfield , but most of the characters and some incidents are almost unchanged . Big-budget extended feats produced by Benjamin Fisz about unfortunate pilots undergoing risked feats on air . The main excitement results to be the grandiose spectacle of the planes , as on the ground roar rather less . Pretty good aerial flick full of thought-provoking issues , drama , fantastic cloudy scenes and spectacular dogfighting . The scene with the balloon observer jumping out with a parachute is reused footage from Blue Max (1966) by John Guillermin . Peter Firth shows professionalism as a crack fighter pilot , he plays a naive youth assigned to dangerous missions . Malcolm McDowell gives a restrained and intelligent acting as a veteran pilot . Top-notch support cast gives excellent performances as Christopher Plummer , Richard Johnson , Ray Milland , John Gielgud , Simon Ward , Trevor Howard and first cinema feature of Tim Pigott-Smith . Adequate photography by Gerry Fisher , though a perfect remastering being necessary . It was filmed at North Weald airfield, in Essex , a hangar that was built for the film was later used for sets of television .The motion picture was professionally directed by Jack Gold . He was born in London and is a prestigious director and producer , known for Bofors guns (1968) , The Reckoning (1970) , Man Friday (1975) , The Medusa touch (1978) , The Chain (1984) , Escape from Sobibor (1987), and Goodnight, Mister Tom (1998) . ¨Aces high¨ is a rehash of the former airplane movie clichés in which the splendid casting stands out . Rating : nice and entertaining , it's a fairly watchable and breathtaking film and results to be a good treatment of WWI flying aces .
Robert J. Maxwell
This has just about everything a viewer might expect from a World War I movie about the RFC. Plenty of air combat, jollification in the evenings, fleeting amours in Amiens, some interpersonal conflict in the mess hall.Maybe that's part of the problem. There's hardly anything here that hasn't been seen before.It's by no means a terrible movie. The scenes of flying in those ancient crates are exhilarating. The performances are at least professional in caliber, although we get to see very little of the older establishment -- John Gielgud, Richard Johnson, Ray Milland, Trevor Howard. Instead the responsibility of carrying the movie rests chiefly on the shoulders of Malcolm McDowell as the squadron's commanding officer and Peter Firth as the new replacement, and they do well enough.I gather the play on which this film is based was a highly successful story of the infantry but those responsible for transposing it to the screen have turned it into a mediocre assemblage of familiar incidents without much in the way of glue holding them together.All the scenes are expectable if you've seen "Dawn Patrol" or "The Blue Max." The boyishly eager replacement has had fourteen hours of flight time. The more seasoned pilots put on a brave front, singing and dancing and boozing it up, but some are beginning to crack. McDowell needs a few belts before he can take her up. Simon Ward is unable to fly at all because he's down with "neuralgia" and is terrified of dying.The German pilot who is shot down and captured is given a royal send off to the prison camp. (I first saw that scene in "Grand Illusion.") The virginal Firth has a one-nighter with a French prostitute and returns eager to take up the emotional part of the relationship, but she's with another officer and ignores him.Nobody really talks about the fliers who haven't returned, but when Firth shows emotion, McDowell takes him aside and demands to know if he thinks he's the only one who cares.McDowell was in the same school as Firth and was dormitory chief or something, but nothing comes of the friendship. It's rarely brought up so there isn't the tension associated with such role conflict, as there is in "The Desert Rats." McDowell has been dating Firth's sister but although it's mentioned as a potential complication, it's dropped from the story.The movie LOOKS as if it hangs together but it's really a series of almost unrelated events that need some sort of central narrative conflict to carry us along.There's something else too. The flight scenes aren't really that convincing. The aerial photography is fine but every anti-aircraft shell seems to burst in the pilots' faces. It's as if the gunners were marksmen. The pilot smiles. Ka-boom, and the screen explodes into orange, and then we see the pilot staring grimly through the smoke, but he and his machine are unscathed.I'm not a techie when it comes to the history of guns but these guns fire at too high a cycling rate to be credible. And when an airplane goes into a tailspin it simply doesn't whine until it reaches a crescendo and smashes into the ground -- except in the stilted imaginations of some film makers. I don't know about guns but I know a little about spins. And I don't mean to carp, but such familiar conventions belong in cartoons.I see I've been a little harsh on the film but, as I said, it's not bad. It's just not nearly as good as it might have been. The director and some of the post-production people seem to have been nodding off at the joystick. If you just want to see men in snappy uniforms walking around arguing, singing bawdy songs, or trying to out fly the Hun, you'll find this enjoyable.
Jackson Booth-Millard
I may not have paid the biggest attention to this film while it was on, but from what I did watch properly it was a good old fashioned film from director Jack Gold (Goodnight Mister Tom). Basically, it is World War I and the film focuses on the Royal Flying Corps. Flying fighter ace Maj. John Gresham (A Clockwork Orange's Malcolm McDowell) runs the base, and he has to deal with new recruits. There is some story of a particular new recruit, Lt. Stephen Croft (Peter Firth), but the film is dominated, and made fun to watch, by the many plane battles filled with roars, shooting and explosive crashes. Also starring The Sound of Music's Christopher Plummer as Capt. 'Uncle' Sinclair, Simon Ward as Lt. Crawford , Arthur's John Gielgud as Headmaster, Trevor Howard as Lieutenant Colonel Silkin, Richard Johnson as Major Lyle, Dial M for Murder's Ray Milland as Brigadier General Whale, David Wood as Lt. 'Tommy' Thompson, Christopher Blake as Lieutenant Roberts, Gilles Béhat as Captain Beckenauer, David Daker as Mess Corporal Bennett, Elliott Cooper as Lieutenant Wade, Barry Jackson as Corporal Albert Joyce, Jacques Maury as Ponnelle, Ron Pember as Lance Corporal Eliot, Johnny English's Tim Pigott-Smith as Major Stoppard and Jeanne Patou as French Singer. As I mentioned, the plane action is pretty much the only highlight of the film, well, and some familiar faces, but it's okay. It was nominated the BAFTA for Film Award Best Cinematography. Worth watching!
machado-2
I have seen this film when I was young, and was very impressed. Probably it turns on my interest in aerial warfare in World War I. Despite technically awful from the airplanes types view, the film shows exactly, with no glamour, how was the life of fighter pilots in WWI.Life expectancy for a new pilot was just two weeks. There was no real training for the pilots, and few of the old pilots care about teaching anything to the new ones. If you look at the dangerous machines they should fly, antiaircraft fire and the enemy machines, it's a miracle that someone has survived to told us the history.
