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Nice effects though.

I wanted to but couldn't!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Available on Blu-ray Disc (Region B)UK/France 1976 English (Colour); War/Drama/Action (EMI/Jacques Roitfeld); 114 minutes (PG certificate)Crew includes: Jack Gold (Director); Howard Barker (Screenwriter, adapting Play JOURNEY'S END by R.C. Sherriff ***½ [7/10] and Book SAGITTARIUS RISING by Cecil Lewis *** [6/10]); S. Benjamin Fisz (Producer); Gerry Fisher (Cinematographer); Syd Cain (Production Designer); Anne V. Coates (Editor); Richard Hartley (Composer)Cast includes: Malcolm McDowell (Maj. John Gresham), Christopher Plummer (Capt. "Uncle" Sinclair), Simon Ward (Lt. Crawford), Peter Firth (Lt. Stephen Croft), David Wood (Lt. "Tommy" Thompson), John Gielgud (Headmaster), Trevor Howard (Lt. Col. Silkin), Richard Johnson (Maj. Lyle), Ray Milland (Brig. Gen. Whale)BAFTA nomination: Cinematography"High above the trenches 14 days is a long life... This is the 15th day!"A naïve schoolboy (Firth) enthusiastically joins a WWI flying squadron in France, commanded by his idolised, former house captain (McDowell) - now utterly disillusioned and heavily reliant on alcohol - where he is told that life expectancy for new recruits is just two weeks.Primarily based on a 1928 play (set in the trenches and first filmed in 1930 by James Whale), the move from army officers on the ground to those in the air importantly maintains a sense of claustrophobia by having its several prolonged and impressively staged aerial battle scenes generally shot from the perspective of tiny, single-occupancy cockpits.It may be less thrilling but is equally moving on land.Blu-ray Extras: Interviews, Short Film, Restoration Comparison, Trailer. *** (6/10)

A quiet sense of detachment hangs over the little airfield in the heart of the French countryside where this drama is played out. In the opening scenes, as the ridiculously young Lieutenant played by Peter Firth arrives, there is much talk of tea and biscuits, and everything seems very civilised. But under the serene surface there are a mass of tics and twitches, the causes of which are subdued by forced gaiety and too much alcohol.Firth hero-worships McDowell's youthful commander – who just happens to be his sister's sweetheart – but McDowell is a tarnished hero. His psychological flaws are emphasised in the opening scenes in which we seem him toying with a German pilot whose plane has crash-landed before scything him down in a hail of bullets from his plane. McDowell needs a drink just to climb into the cockpit (while another ace, played by Simon Ward, feigns neuralgia to escape the terrors of aerial combat) and is haunted by a loneliness borne of the repetitive chore of writing letters of condolence to the families of the teenage fighter pilots who are shot down under his command.There's nothing particularly groundbreaking in Jack Gold's WWI saga, but it is all professionally staged and acted with some crisply edited aerial sequences. All the situations are familiar, and the film must have seemed a little dated when it was released (around the same time as Star Wars), but there's a reassuring Britishness about it all. Despite the reasonably graphic depiction of the terrible psychological consequences of regularly flying towards one possible death, the film is still something of a throwback to the likes of Hollywood's The Dawn Patrol. Only here, the line between the good guys and the bad guys is blurred, and opposing pilots aren't so blinded by national duty that they can't appreciate and acknowledge the professionalism and spirit of their rivals when the opportunity arises. The ending is inevitable – the cycle continues – and elements of the story belie the age of its source material, but Aces High still delivers a quality film experience.

It's The first World War for a change. And as one of the very few movies to address this sadly neglected subject, 'Aces High' is an excellent effort. This war was such a comprehensive disaster by just about every evaluation, one suspects that funding for a movie relating to it might be hard come by. Just consider how many films have been made about WW2. That was a conflict which had clearly defined victories enabling all of the allies to celebrate. In comparison, after the 1918 armistice, most people and nations simply sighed with a deep, abject relief. Here we are dealing with the air corp, the fledgling Royal Air Force. For the aces life is bittersweet. You may not live long - scarcely longer than the wretched soldiers, but at least you sleep in bed at night, in a warm dry billet. There are no lice, no rats, no unburied comrades stinking the trench out. But there's still fear. And this movie addresses its caustic effect upon morale. Malcolm McDowell - of 'Clockwork Orange' fame - plays squadron leader, Major Gresham, based somewhere in France. Like most, he set out with a schoolboy's enthusiasm and willingness, but survived long enough to grow cynical and angry, and fear is something he himself can scarcely hold at bay with drink. His squadron isn't in much better shape. One member is on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The others get by as best they can. Most nights they are drunk. As fliers they represent the upper-class. Snobbish, public-school educated, automatically commissioned officers, contemptuous of the working-class ground crew who maintain their aeroplanes rather as grooms would tend their horses. The ground crew, in turn, are phlegmatic. They can bide their time. Almost all of these boys will only last a fortnight. They turn-up, young and fresh-faced, criminally inexperienced, and are blown away by the enemy aces who - from innate skill and good fortune - have lived long enough to perfect their flying and shooting skills. These lessons were still not learnt by the time of WW2. Peter Firth plays Lieutenant Croft. He is just such a recruit. He lionises Gresham who was his house-master at school and is married to his sister. Gresham on the other hand resents his innocence. He sees Croft as just another doomed casualty in waiting. You can't afford to have close friends; they don't last long enough. The cast is truly superb. I am no particular fan of any, except John Guilgud, who has a brief cameo as headmaster. Firth in particular as an unworldly, sensitive and affectionate youth is a tour-de-force. His face is a moving map of human emotion. You know he must die. He has no killer-instinct whatsoever. To him it's just a game, kids pretending to be men. And old hands two years his senior will wipe him from the sky. McDowell as the edgy leader who must balance necessity with expediency is also entirely believable. The air combat scenes are very well played out. True, it is no 'Battle of Britain', but then it was made for a fraction of the budget. In any case, WW1 planes travelled at a third of the speed of spitfires, so the drama is inevitably slower and more sedately choreographed. Its nearest comparison is 'The Blue Max' from a decade earlier. Slicker and much more lavish, it seems to lack the minutiae of personal observation and in my opinion is less engaging as a consequence. Some have described this as an anti-war movie. I disagree. It is a war movie, plain and simple. It doesn't glorify combat because in this war there was simply nothing to glorify. Technology had leapfrogged culture, strategy and tactics, and the result was slaughter. The buffers in command were still fighting Waterloo. Who could possibly make a pro-war movie about World War One? This take offers a cameo of life as a British pilot in 1916. Between moments of an outdated chivalry that soldiers had long since consigned to the mud, it was short, nasty and brutal; but, like so much of the conflict, propaganda dressed it up to appear as everything but.  You can almost see Black-Adder, but with wings instead of gags.

I was among the Eton College boys filmed when the headmaster (Sir John Gielgud) introduced Gresham (Malcom McDowell) to the boys. There must be many of us out there. It was filmed on a school holiday, and we were given the choice of an excursion or taking part in the film. I seem to remember that we were not terribly well behaved, but the director eventually sorted us out. We were thoroughly amused when the make-up artists re-arranged the hair of some of the boys. We each got £10, which was quite a lot for a schoolboy in 1976! Sir John was gracious enough to give me his autograph when I knocked on the door of his caravan between lessons. I also got Malcolm McDowell's. I think this was when they were filming the romantic bit at the beginning, because he persuaded me to get hers as well! I am sure that all of us who were there still feel very privileged to have been associated with such a great film. It was of course based on the classic WW1 play, 'Journey's End'.