STEYN ONLINE: War in the Air: Twelve O’Clock High and Masters of the Air.

What I can say from with pure subjectivity is that Masters of the Air is nowhere near as satisfying as Band of Brothers, which depicted camaraderie in the face of horror and death far more effectively. It’s not even as good as The Pacific, which was less successful at the task, mostly because it split our focus between three heroes over its ten episodes, none of which ever share the screen.

That all might be true. But I don’t remember thinking that after watching The Battle of Britain (1969), and that was only a quarter the length of Masters of the Air. Though it did star Michael Caine, Robert Shaw, Christopher Plummer, Edward Fox and Ian McShane, and perhaps that’s the problem – there’s a measurable deficit of charisma in too many actors today. I found myself confused by so many young pilots sporting what looked like the same moustache.

The good news is that Masters of the Air improves with a subsequent viewing. The bad news is that it still isn’t as satisfying as Band of Brothers after nearly a dozen. Even worse is that its nine hours, spectacular as they are, don’t have a fraction of the drama of Henry King’s austere wartime story about a man trying to convince the men he commands that their probable deaths serve a purpose they might not understand, in the service of a military doctrine that might not actually work.

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