WWII in HD: The Air War (2010)
**** (out of 4)
This follow-up entry in the History Channel's 2009 documentary series takes a look at the American 8th Air Force battle against the German Luftwaffe in the year leading up to D-Day. We learn early on that the 8th Air Force was started shortly after the Pearl Harbor bombing and that originally they had eight men and no planes. From here, in terrific color footage, we see the year's worth of battles where the young Americans were fighting with trained professional and all of it leading to one of the deadliest battles as the group tried to take out Berlin and finally cripple the Germans. As with the previous entries, this one here is yet another amazing example of documentary filmmaking because we get pretty much everything you'd want to see and know. Like the previous series we are treated with many of the brutalities of war including one graphic sequence where we see the most damaging thing of being fired upon and surviving and that's the major burns that you're likely to suffer. The footage contains many scenes of flesh being burned off and the sequence just shows what all these soldiers had to deal with. The aerial footage is quite amazing and seeing it in Technicolor certainly makes you see things in a different light. As you'd expect some of the footage is just jaw dropping as it puts you right there in the center of the action and seeing the heavy ambush of planes makes you wonder how some of these men were able to survive so many battles. Rob Lowe does a very good job with the narration and we get Casey Affleck, Sean Astin, Christ O'Donnell and Elijah Wood doing some of the narration. Real soldiers Joe Armanini, Steve Pisanos and John Gibbsons are on hand to share their memories of the battles as well as Andy Rooney who was covering these battles at the time.
**** (out of 4)
This follow-up entry in the History Channel's 2009 documentary series takes a look at the American 8th Air Force battle against the German Luftwaffe in the year leading up to D-Day. We learn early on that the 8th Air Force was started shortly after the Pearl Harbor bombing and that originally they had eight men and no planes. From here, in terrific color footage, we see the year's worth of battles where the young Americans were fighting with trained professional and all of it leading to one of the deadliest battles as the group tried to take out Berlin and finally cripple the Germans. As with the previous entries, this one here is yet another amazing example of documentary filmmaking because we get pretty much everything you'd want to see and know. Like the previous series we are treated with many of the brutalities of war including one graphic sequence where we see the most damaging thing of being fired upon and surviving and that's the major burns that you're likely to suffer. The footage contains many scenes of flesh being burned off and the sequence just shows what all these soldiers had to deal with. The aerial footage is quite amazing and seeing it in Technicolor certainly makes you see things in a different light. As you'd expect some of the footage is just jaw dropping as it puts you right there in the center of the action and seeing the heavy ambush of planes makes you wonder how some of these men were able to survive so many battles. Rob Lowe does a very good job with the narration and we get Casey Affleck, Sean Astin, Christ O'Donnell and Elijah Wood doing some of the narration. Real soldiers Joe Armanini, Steve Pisanos and John Gibbsons are on hand to share their memories of the battles as well as Andy Rooney who was covering these battles at the time.