Metacritic reviews

One thinks of the great opening line of that great novel The Good Soldier: "This is the saddest story I have ever heard." Like many such tales, this one is worth taking to your aching heart.

The last word you'd expect for it is "sweet," yet it is exactly the right one. That may come as no surprise to some, since the director is Jan Sverak, who brought sweetness to his breakthrough film "Koyla," but it caught me by total surprise.

A crackerjack combination of live action, special effects and recycled footage.

Dark Blue World's warm story and beautiful photography almost hits the mark, and it has a great ending.

Dark Blue World is "Pearl Harbor" without the product placements, without the Hollywood bombast, and certainly without the $100-million-plus budget.

The film mixes unashamed kitsch, thrilling airfight scenes and dark historical drama. But what gives it a special charge is its portrait of the Czech RAF group: what happened to them before, during and after the war.

Has some terrific aerial sequences and exciting dogfights. But the clichés in the script by Zdenek Sverak (the director's father) keep the film firmly grounded when the action's not aloft.

Dark Blue World and Sverak's previous "Kolya" were each written by the director's father, Zdenek, and both films betray a weakness for the symmetrical and sentimental.

The aerial-dogfight scenes, which are beautiful and shot through with jittery panic, are notable for not being staged for videogame kicks.

The film is more of an old-school wartime yarn, crackling with the expected camaraderie among the hardscrabble volunteers.