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DARK BLUE WORLD Send This Review to a Friend
World War II movies never seem to go out of fashion, and "Dark Blue World," written by Zdenek Sverak and directed by his son Jan Sverak, makers of the esteemed Czech film "Kolya," yields a fresh perspective. The film is about Czech pilots who fled to escape the Nazi occupation of their homeland and joined Britain's Royal Air Force. But it is told from the 1950 viewpoint of a pilot imprisoned under Communist rule of Czechoslovakia, apparently because of the fear that such fliers were free-spirited Western-oriented individuals as likely to oppose Communist controls as they did the Nazis.
The pilot, Franta Slama (Ondrej Vetchy), now in his forties, is being held as an "enemy of the people" in a labor camp instead of being treated as a hero. Very ill, he recounts his adventures to an inmate in the infirmary. It's flashback time as we learn of how, leaving his Czech girlfriend behind, he and Karel, (Krystof Hadek), a young trainee pilot, flee together and develop a close father-son type relationship. The war changes everything.
This is another of those war tales in which two men fall in love with the same woman, the pretty Brit Susan (Tara Fitzgerald). But "Dark Blue World" avoids the corn. It is a far cry from "Pearl Harbor," in which the war becomes a backdrop to romance. For one thing the situation depicted is basically believable. More importantly, the emphasis remains primarily on the war experiences of Czech patriots, what happens to them and the political turn that engulfs their nation for a second time.
In addition to spinning a war yarn, very well acted and well-told both personally and in the sharply filmed action scenes that recall the air battles to save Britain, the Sveraks take the opportunity to dig into their own country's history. The story may mean more at home, but the film is told with enough lucidity and panache to make it a strong, involving epic with international appeal. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
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