I think this is a very believable film. All the actors perform well and it all adds up to an excellent anti war film. Malcolm McDowell is brilliant as Gresham. At the start of the film he goes back to his old school and tells tales about caning the enemy. In reality he is close to cracking up due to the stress of constant fighting and having to send ever younger boys to their deaths. Peter Firth plays the naive young pilot who believes Gresham is a perfect hero and that the war will be fun. He slowly begins to see things differently when he sees the death and suffering at the front when Gresham goes to pick up a German pilot he has shot down. Then there is Simon Ward who cannot face flying anymore and uses supposed illness to avoid going up. There is also a very realistic scene where one of the pilots is seen falling to his death in flames when his plane catches fire. Gresham has tried in vain to get parachutes issued but the commanders have decided that parachutes could mean that a man is more likely to jump than carry on fighting. This gives the message that they don't care about the men as there will always be others to replace them. In some versions of the film I have seen the ending is immediately after Peter Firth's character (Croft) is killed in the collision with an enemy plane. To me this is wrong because the last part after this is one of the strongest in the film. Gresham is back in his office as the sole survivor of the last mission and he is struggling to write letters to the families of the dead. He makes several attempts. Then 3 new young kids are introduced and Gresham is once again faced with knowing that they too will most likely soon be killed. He goes to the window and in his imagination sees Croft coming towards him. This shows a man pushed to the limit who cares deeply about the killing but realises he cannot do anything about it. I rate this as a great anti war film. The characters are believable and the action scenes are realistic. Although some scenes were borrowed from the Blue Max most of them are new and even though most of the planes are not original they still look excellent. Overall strong performances, excellent action scenes and a believable story make this a film well worth seeing.
Review of Aces High
