SHORT TAKES
HURRICANE directed by David Blair
We’ve already had Spitfire, a recent doco celebrating the plane that supposedly won the Battle of Britain. Now comes Hurricane, which isn’t about the predominant Brit fighter of that conflict but the 303 Squadron that flew them as one of the Allies’ most lethal units.
So, more finest-hour RAF ra-ra? Well, nie. The squadron was made up of relatively experienced Polish pilots who had escaped their occupied country. They got a mention in dispatches in The Battle of Britain movie (“English, please!”) and there’s a new Polish-backed 303 Squadron also doing the rounds (by the look of that one’s trailer, everyone is better-looking).
Hurricane, though, is a timely reminder that not all of Churchill’s “few” were plucky Brits. And in the case of the Poles, their service was rewarded with being forcibly sent back to be cared for by Stalin back home.
So, there’s a grim fatalism running through Hurricane along with the predictable stuff about the squadron proving its mettle to high command, impressing the local womenfolk and mourning its casualties with copious amounts of vodka. As the lead, Game of Thrones star Iwan Rheon makes good work of Polish-Swiss ace Jan Zumbach. But the film is rather undone in its cruddy computer depictions of aerial warfare, which not only look like a videogame, but also seemingly keep shooting down the same German bomber on sortie after sortie. Still, the drama on the ground does enough to make this underfunded effort mildly engaging.
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