Amazon.co.uk:Customer reviews: Lancaster Skies [DVD]

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 May 2019

I was looking forward to viewing this film; I am ex-RAF and though I have not flown in the Lancaster I did fly in what was to be called the Lancaster MkII, the Lincoln. I was unable to watch this for more than the first 30 minutes, the character building part of the film. However, the characters and the story were so morose that I decided to watch another day. What disappointed me the most was the poor attention to detail, for instance; in the British forces one does not salute if one is not wearing one's hat. Additionally, two officers of the same rank, neither of whom was wearing a hat were saluting each other. In fact, I don't think I have ever seen a military based film with quite so much saluting. This simple mistake destroyed any sense of accuracy and the standard of acting was somewhat wooden. I honestly hope that the next time I try to view it I see something more laudable in it.
I am adding more details some months after surviving this awful mess of a film, an insult to those who flew on bombing missions during the war. I tries recently to watch it right through but was so bored and angry by this drivel that I stopped it again just after the point I had reached the first time. It now resides in the bin,

134 people found this helpful

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D. A. Sheppard

Boring and not realistic.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 May 2019

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My father was in Bomber command and saw many dreadful things. This movie is very dull with many mistakes. I don't believe in over hyping everything like they did in Memphis Belle. That was so over hyped it is untrue. I saw the original footage that was taken on the actual final mission and there was no drama what so ever. I couldn't warm to the characters in Lancaster skies and found the whole thing dreadful!! I could see no point in making this movie when you can still get realistic Bomber Command movies like "An appointment in London". This was said by the Bomber crews to be the most realistic movie about what it was like, ever made.

48 people found this helpful

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Andy T

A Complete Waste Of Time And Money

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 May 2019

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I gave this film one star because I couldn't give it zero! The script is appauling, I'm sure a 10 year old could have done better. The synopsis on the packaging sounded really tempting, but the reality was a bitty, dull and boring - 90 minutes I'll never get back. I persevered hoping that the flying scenes might rescue it, but they didn't. I was expecting something on a par with The Dambusters, Memphis Belle or The Battle of Britain, what I actually got was something less entertaining than Dick and Dom farting the National Anthem - and that was bad!

So, at the end, the aircraft is returning to the UK, starboard inner shut down, flying controls compromised due to a German Night Fighter.... The Captain orders the crew to make ready to bail out as he doesn't know if he can land it in one piece.... The tension almost builds and the film stops.

Drivel.

29 people found this helpful

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Tw Rogers

Disappointing production

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 May 2019

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My father was RAF aircrew in WW2 and I was looking forward to this film - a long overdue Bomber Command tribute in which so many served valiantly and died. I watched it through to the end. No easy task because overall this was hugely disappointing. Poorly paced, badly written predictable and dull. So much so that I am bound to ask were these professionals actors? Same question for the Director and Screen Writer. If not well fair enough. Just about tolerable if it was Amdram. Otherwise, dismal.

31 people found this helpful

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PK

Lancaster Skies? Not for long..........

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 May 2019

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This film could and should have been better.

Shots of the inside of the aircraft were somewhat limited, crew space may be cramped but not if you film with the crew out.
Poor storyline, a whacking great gap after the introduction with no real ariel action, just a couple of flybys. The mission at the end which was over in a few minutes and then we did not see the landing of the damaged Lancaster.
Attention to detail was absent in that the houses where the film scenes were shot had bloopers for the eye to see, nice V***x windows by the way...…could do with a clean!

Not what I expected and do not recommend.

Cant understand why anyone would give any more than 2 stars, but there again there's those that know and those that don't.

23 people found this helpful

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Great movie

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 May 2019

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The Director has produced a super, enjoyable movie on a very tiny budget of £80,000. To be honest, I thought this would have been impossible. However Callum Burn, has pulled the rabbit out of the hat and has made a memorable production. The characters are believable and show the true raw emotion nature of the crew flying a Lancaster into combat.
I am disappointed to read some of the very petty comments on RAF saluting protocols not being accurate in the film and the use of model aircraft. Given the limited resources available, and the overall quality of the film, is this really important?

17 people found this helpful

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London Matt

A little flat but with some charm

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 July 2020

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First, point. This film was shot on a budget of £80k.
Let's put that in context: You could make this film 1,250 times over for the budget of "Midway" another recently released Aviation movie.
Of the two, I found Lancaster Skies marginally more compelling (but Midway was a massive disappointment)

The limited budget means the movie has to try and make more story out of the dialogue and characters and can't just wow us with CGI and aviation shots. Many people have said it doesn't use CGI. This isn't true at all. Any shot with more than one Lancaster flying is using CGI...but there is relatively little CGI. (Although CGI is actually uniformly terrible in aviation movies. The only film with good aviation sequences in of late - Dunkirk -eschewed CGI for doing it the proper way.)

The attempt to make it a character driven movie would work better if the characters were better, but the pace is soo slooooww, and it's all a little wooden.

I actually quite enjoyed the final aerial sequence. Some will say it wasn't dramatic enough, but actually I thought it was quite nicely understated rather than being melodramatic like Memphis Belle.

Overall, if you are watching this alongside mainstream movies, you will rate it as one star or two star. If you are watching it as being almost nothing more than a media studies student project - which at £80k budget it almost is - then it's a five star job.

Hence. 3 stars overall.

5 people found this helpful

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Intriguing wartime drama but with a really irritating/annoying ending.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 November 2021

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I was so looking forward to watching Lancaster Skies but sadly it has not lived up to my expectations. While the plot is a slow burner (which is fine), the ending really irritated me.
The film opens with some dramatic scenes on board a Lancaster bomber and the closing scenes also take place aboard the plane but the bulk of the 'action' takes place at either the airfield where the Lancaster squadron is based, or in a pub which is located presumably nearby.
I did not really warm to any of the characters even though we are given some insights into the background story of the lead character (a rather solemn, taciturn figure) through the use of flashbacks.
I imagine it must have been pretty terrifying flying in bombers in the second world war given the high mortality rate among the crews and while this film attempts to capture this feeling, it doesn't quite succeed in my opinion.
So if you enjoy films that have a slow moving plot and rather melancholy undertones, then you may find Lancaster Skies to your liking but just be aware that you may be disappointed or, like me, irritated by the way it ends.

One person found this helpful

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Red Wolf

Another Example of how not to Make a War Film

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 August 2020

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Typical example of why modern film making sucks: The movie only had a budget of £80k, so everyone was panicking that the special effects would not be up to audience expectations. The special effects are fine! What lets this film down is that due to the obsession with the special effects on a low budget, no effort was spend on the story, or the direction. The actors clearly do not know what they are supposed to do, and the story is supposedly complex and multilayered, but unfortunately nobody ever made the effort of connecting the dots and pull it all together into a coherent narrative.

There is a lot of supposed character development, taking up about two thirds of the movie, and when all this buildup is supposed to finally culminate int the desperate battle over Berlin ― well, basically nothing happens. One engine is out, the navigator has been hit and will probably not make it home, but is there any hint of urgency, dread, despair, shock or anger in the plane...? Not even a trace, you might as well be in a countryside pub on a rainy Sunday afternoon.... this is not due to the aircrew being stoic, it is due to clearly nobody knowing how to act.

As for the characterisations, they are initially good, but then they do not go anywhere. Heaving established all the different characters on the plane, when the supposedly climactic battle comes everyone just acts like robots, so the hour or so invested into establishing all those characters was just a waste of everyone's time.

... and just to make sure the mess is complete, the lazy writers could not even be bothered to come up with an ending for the movie, it just stops mid-battle, with no hint as to the fate of the bomber crew that we just invested the best part of two hours trying to develop some kind of connection with, and mostly failing in this effort. On second thought, it may actually be for the better that there is no ending, because it would only have dragged on the film by another 10 minutes or so....

As a result, you feel left empty and betrayed, when the end credits finally roll.

2 people found this helpful

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WORTHY OF A GLANCE

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 May 2019

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If looking for an action-packed, fast-moving war movie with frequent sequences in the air with bomber-command this is probably not what you are possibly anticipating.
It is an often poignant story which tells of former Battle of Britain pilot and survivor Douglas Miller (Jeffrey Mundell) whose younger brother had been killed in action receiving a posting at Bomber-Command to command a Lancaster Bomber for raiding missions over German territory.
The crew of the bomber had only a few days earlier lost it's much loved and respected Captain, and struggle to accept Douglas as his replacement, though second in command George Williams (David Dobson) does everything he can to ease the new commander into the team, though Douglas often doesn't help himself, however he does need to build the team around him for what is to come.
Douglas who has regular flashbacks to younger times when as a fighter-plane enthusiast he dreams of one day being a pilot.
The film a low-budget affair is in my view worthy of viewing even if caught on a movie-channel perhaps.

3 people found this helpful

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5 star		45%
4 star		16%
3 star		12%
2 star		10%
1 star		17%

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