Hurricane

Hurricane (David Blair, 2018) tells the story of the RAF’s 303 Squadron, the majority of which was Polish pilots fighting the German Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain in World War II. They were prodigiously successful in shooting down German planes, doing more than their fair share of the damage to Hitler’s plans to invade Britain.

The film, we are told at the beginning, is based on actual events, which makes some of what you see quite shocking. That is the way that these pilots were treated by some British pilots and the authorities in Poland after the war. The general consensus seemed to be that they, over time went from escaping the Nazis and then suffering the Soviets.

It was a well told story with decent performances from Iwan Rheon and Stefanie Martini. Ms Martini did well to show some of the experiences of women serving in the armed forces in WWII. It seems that, depressingly, women could play their part but some men would only let them do this on their terms.

I did worry some times, watching this, as it looked to as if it was a film that was filmed as economically as possible. There were lots of CGI used in the dog fight scenes, but the filmmakers just about got away with that. There were a few scenes with some interesting prosthetics for characters that had suffered from fire in the cockpit. At least they were shown in this film, Christopher Plummer’s character suffered burns damage in The Battle Of Britain (Guy Hamilton, 1969) but was not shown with his injuries, a chance missed.

What also can’t be ignored is how the film discusses the role of Poles, and foreigners in general, in Britain. The film was of course set in 1940, but context is provided by it being a a film made in 2018. It’s not unreasonable to draw parallels with the experience of foreign personnel in Britain during and after WWII and after Brexit. 56% of Britons wanted foreign personnel repatriated after WWII, such gratitude.

On the whole I enjoyed the film and I was caught up in the story. It was well told and was a fitting tribute to the brave personnel that took their part in winning freedom for us all.