Dark Blue World

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * * )

You may think you have seen this World War II flyboy saga before, only in a different language.

And sometimes you have. It uses some footage from the 1969 classic The Battle of Britain to bolster its aerial scenes, and there are enough of them to make this a thrilling must-see for anyone who knows their Spitfires from their Hurricanes.

This Czech-German co-production also has some plot parallels to the bloated Pearl Harbor. It too has a habit of ditching in the English Channel at crucial moments.

And its two leading comrades - Czech pilots Franta (Vetchy) and Karel (Hadek), who escape the Nazi occupation and join the RAF - lose their heads over an English actress.

That's Fitzgerald playing a lonely war widow who has devoted herself to her country garden and looking after evacuee children.

But if parts of Dark Blue World are sentimental - and this is a movie which comes with scenes involving a sad-eyed spaniel - it also manages to be confidently romantic, heroic as well as purposeful.

The movie is told in flashback from the point of view of Franta, who, having flown for the RAF, has returned home only to be imprisoned during the Cold War by the communists who fear his freedom-fighting days might not be over.

The prison scenes, in which Franta discusses the war with a doctor who was formerly an SS officer, certainly help to give Dark Blue World a gravity far beyond being just a subtitled Biggles adventure.

That said, it's still one fine warbird flick, even if its Spitfires' gun bays are obviously plugged-up and painted in pink primer.

Directed by Jan Sverak (a foreign Oscar-winner for Koyla) and scripted by his father Zdenek Sverak, Dark Blue World - the title is a reference to the RAF uniforms and a recurring melancholy song - is certainly a don't-make-'em-like-they-used-to kind of film.

It's also an illuminating history lesson, reminding us that not all who fought to win the Battle of Britain were British - or spoke English. Dark Blue World might be old-fashioned enough to have been made any time in the past 50 years. But with its combination of aerial thrills and poignant story, it's equally ear-popping, pulse-racing and heart-breaking.

Cast: Ondrej Vetchy, Krystof Hadek, Tara Fitzgerald
Director: Jan Sverak

Rating: M (low level violence)

Running time: 119 mins

Screening: Lido, Epsom from Thursday