Dark Blue World

Two Czechoslovakian pilots (Ondrej Vetchy, Kristof Hadek) escape the Nazis and flee to England, where they fly with the RAF and both manage to fall in love with the same Englishwoman (Tara Fitzgerald). Writer Zdenek Sverak and and director Jan Sverak (Zdenek’s son) tell their story by flashing back and forth from the war years to 1950 Czechoslovakia, where the older flier (Vetchy) is now a prisoner of the Communists, who are suspicious of his brush with British freedoms. Between the complicated flashback structure and the hackneyed story (it’s essentially the plot of Pearl Harbor), the Sveraks never get much momentum going, and the film becomes monotonous. Some of the flying scenes are good, though, making clever use of computerized effects and outtakes from The Battle of Britain (1969).