timdinchhammonds

I will say Leslie Manville is excellent and plays her character of it's time. Stoical with a steely rod for a spine when it comes to social mores. That is the only bright spot. It loses all credibility when a fighter pilot nursing his shot down plane, at treetop height, cuts to the next scene, on the ground with a cut face in his parachute harness. Even a five year old would understand if you bale out at 60 feet, it's not going to end well. As is typical with any BBC production, there is a long list of "MUST BE INCLUDED" Gay guy check, etc etc. So much so that plots bend over backwards to include them all and feels so false. Apparently it has a big budget but it's difficult to see where they spent it. The CGI is of a standard they would have been ashamed of in the 90's. As a soap, it's fine but if you are interested in the period, almost anything else that has been produced is better.

This is a great film that tells the story of the war on ISIS from a Kurdish perspective. The casual viewer may think American, Iraqi and Russian forces were solely responsible for the destruction of the scourge known as ISIS but the Kurds were predominately the boots on the ground with minimal resources. One mistake was to have the French journalist with an eye patch, caused by the bombing of a media centre in Syria. This is where the real Journalist with an eye patch, Marie Colvin actually died. Perhaps it was a misguided tribute but for me proved a distraction. If you are looking for a neat bow that ties up the beginning, middle and end so that you can put it on a shelf, you won't find it. The stories of war unfortunately, are never ending sequels. What they serve to remind us is, that we are a lot better off than we think.

Is the animation overlay to save on budget, may be. Or is it so that it can't be compared to Band of Brothers. May be. I think it could have worked either way but as a composite it is an unnecessary distraction. So much so, that I can't watch it and I'm a big fan of all things WW2. To me the two stylistic aspects jarred against each other rather than being greater than their parts. If your delivery of the message has been dissipated, then you have failed as a story teller in my humble opinion.