Film Review - Aces High

An interesting study of aerial warfare in World War I from Jack Gold, who produced several superficially traditional genre movies with a lot lurking below the surface. The most striking thing about the anti-war Aces High is the repeated theme of the brittle young men forced into such a terrifying idea as aerial combat, barely a couple of decades into heavier-than-air flight becoming successful.


This is transmitted by a cast of desperately young looking men in fragile planes (even McDowell manages to look about 18 despite his screen career being about ten years in) and the resulting psychological damage done to them, centred on the squadron's new arrival Croft, played by Peter Firth. An old public schoolfriend of McDowell's established ace Gresham, he struggles to deal with the hardened personality of his former friend (in actuality a shattered functioning alcoholic) and his own ineptitude as a fighter pilot. The enthusiastic new arrival, clearly seduced by ideas of patriotism, glamour and chivalry, struggles with the reality of both warfare and his hero turning out to be in such a state over the course of a typically brutal week in the RFC. It's not especially fresh but it is done well, with lots of palpable emotion and some fine work from Firth as Croft is broken down and rebuilt.

The problem is that the film also throws in a lot of things typical of war films of the period, especially the British ones. There are a selection of venerable character actors to add class and only Christopher Plummer's squadron leader, a companionable old man suffering from the tangible pain of taking so many bright young pilot to their deaths, really adds much to the narrative, with the others serving as distractions. It also has to have the action sequences, and they're well done (though some is stock footage taken from The Blue Max) but again serve to undermine the central message.

So the film is something of a mixed success thanks to this lack of focus and ultimate conviction that the story of Croft and Gresham can support the film alone. But it's still an enjoyable and thought-provoking piece.