Whatta crock... That said, the dogfight scenes were stunning, and I loved the cutaways and "special shots" (that bullet hitting the Spit's mirror was one such "Wow!" moment, and the tracer-work was well-done), however the story's end itself was rather stupid... There were just too many places where the director wanted my "disbelief suspended" that , once it was revealed that they were down in Ireland and to be interred, it ruined the film...
I'm supposed to believe that a Bf109E flew from say, Calais across the Channel to Dover, then across England, then across the Irish Sea and inland enough to be out of sight of the Irish coast? I plotted that flight on my charts and it comes out to a one-way distance of 441 miles... For combat-loaded aircraft...
Or were the Germans supposed to take off from Norway, land at a secret base in the Shetlands, then attack a target in N Ireland, then refuel at yet another secret base, perhaps in Scotland, then back to the Shetlands, for the refueling refueling for the return leg to Norway...
And still, the RAF had Spitfires based in N. Ireland to defend against the obvious attcks that would come from the Luftwaffe to N. Ireland in the Fall of 1940, based on Enigma intercepts ...
I won't even get into trying to figure what the hell the Spit-pilot was thinking with his obsessive pursuit of the German, to the point of wrecking his aircraft, and attempting to kill the guy... Maybe the Germans bombed his parents out or something like that, but still... The "review" was wrong about "not needing" such details as a back-story...
It should have started with, "A long time agao, in a Neutral Counrty far, far away"...