First Light

2010
7| 1h15m| en| More Info
Released: 14 September 2010 Released
Producted By: Lion Television
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

In May 1940, feeling the RAF needs every man to fight to Luftwaffe, Geoffrey 'Boy' Wellum joins at 18, becoming the youngest ever Spitfire pilot. After an intense training, he soon bonds with the flying men of his squadron. In the air, danger is great, but on the ground drinks, sports and girls, in Geoff's case Sarah, provide great comfort. However in time, the casualties exact a grueling psychological toll, until his tour of duty is ended after 18 months.

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Reviews

Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.
Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
Staci Frederick Blistering performances.
leethomas-11621 I have always wanted to know of the real experiences of the WW2 Battle of Britain fighter pilots and here is one of the best presentations of one man's personal experiences. His story is beautifully dramatised, with some great air fights and on the ground the boredom, the fears as well as the good times. What the movie does best is convey the men's struggle to keep going when utterly exhausted and facing the possibility of death at any time. It's an intimate study and I believe a truthful one. The pilot Geoffrey "Boy" Wellum was still alive at the time of the making of the movie (because he was only a teenager when he first flew) and in voiceover reflects on those days. His final words are heart-breaking. Was it all worth it? To complement this film, a wonderful history of the Battle of Britain is in an episode of Battlefield Britain presented by Peter and Dan Snow on BBC DVD.
Adams5905 I wasn't really taken with this-we've seen it all before, done better elsewhere, when the vintage aircraft necessary to put the flying sequences together weren't quite so scarce (or valuable), and there was less reliance on SFX-the world has become a poorer place since the introduction of CGI. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly what was missing from this production. The lead character, while not simply two-dimensional, gave nothing to quicken the blood. Even the 'scramble' scenes seemed slow and plodding, as though the actors were simply doing it by the numbers. Some of the action footage was unforgivably bad (as has been pointed out elsewhere, some of it was pinched from other films), and there was little in the way of back-story or characterization. The film wasn't improved by punctuation from the (fictional) lead character as an old man, analyzing his attitudes and feelings at the time... It was rather as though the cast felt as exhausted and bone-weary as the boys felt in 1941...All in all, I should say turn off the TV, and enjoy a good book like 'Sigh for a Merlin', or, re-watch one of the classics like "Battle of Britain" or even "633 Squadron", which convey that sense of urgency and derring-do far more convincingly-one last thing, another reviewer here has questioned whether the sound footage was really the real McCoy: I concur, a Merlin has a much denser, richer, raucous sound-these were obviously piston engines, possibly Merlin Is, but more likely Kestrels or Goshawks.
jvdesuit1 Some here are always dissatisfied with that kind of movies; of course Battle of Britain is a masterpiece, but why diminish the real qualities of this movie which gives us from the very man who was in these terrible moments protecting us (I should say "you" as I'm French, but indirectly they protected us; had Britain fallen into the hands of the Berlin monsters it would have been worse than the actual occupation of France we suffered for all of us.)with his fellow pilots.The power of this movie is summed up in the first phrases of Wellum long after the war. "you can't forget it" he says, and quite probably so true. The power of the movie is to take us right up into the minds and side effects of their jobs at an age when you should think yourself as eternal. Their reactions may seem shocking (see the arrival of Wellum at his station), but they are so true when you fight against fear everyday, well I suppose.No, this is a great movie as the BBC often produces, full of emotion and I'm not ashamed to have succumbed to it. It was worth seeing.
Rob-O-Cop very old school TV movie, slow pacing, contemplative bio pic of spitfire pilots during ww2. nothing we haven't seen or heard before and other than this is the story of from one mans point of view one wonders why this story needs to be told again and in this way. stiff upper lip, British heroes and bad bad Germans, it's like noting has changed in how we tell stories so we're left with a remake of what a TV movie about ww2 spitfire pilots might look like in the 50's or 60's. The good news is the spitfires look fantastic. I'm assuming some of them are CGI and they're really well done. In the old days these would be real but it's impossible to tell so well done to the fx and props crew.This film was OK, nothing more than a Sunday afternoon TV movie, but with the amount of films being made today perhaps we do have a right to expect something better.