TV series reviews: Masters of the Air & Manhunt

 If I've said it once, I will say it again, whenever a screenwriter delves into the dusty pages of history, one has to take special care in the telling of it. Not only doing justice to the real people involved and not just honouring their deeds and heroism but also a fair portrayal of those on the other side of the coin.

For the first of those two, American pilots in World War II in Masters of the Air, I honestly wasn't expecting to be drawn in so intently and be so invested in the survival of the main characters (all based on real people), production values - especially the score by Blake Neely, is set firmly at eleven. I suppose I was just used to the typical war films all big heroics and sending in the cavalry at the last minute to save the day. 

This production is five stars all the way. The ugliness of war is there for all to see, they do not go light on any of the details - which means both sides show the horrors of what everyone did to stay alive and the overall series is all the better for it. You can tell they did their homework and they have definitely done the real people proud. On all sides of this war. 

No one is left out of the story and Callum Turner, Austin Butler, Anthony Boyle and Nate Mann of this completely brilliant cast especially, engender real feelings of empathy. They are well trained pilots but they are also young men, in cramped spaces thousands of miles away from home and up in the air, being shot at and relying on each other to get back to base. Real people, getting airsick, scared shitless and fighting with everything they have and it's real. Only for them to get back in those planes and face the same dangers, every single time. This regiment became known as the bloody Hundredth because they had so many casualties. And still they kept on going - they weren't going to go home before the job was done. 

What really sells this story and gets you to keep watching, is the friendship between these men. The very real comradeship of that essential reliance on each other, the pilots, the navigators, those operating the guns and the bombs, they all had to work so hard and so in tune with the others and in itself that creates a real and lasting bond that kept each other alive - literally. Both on the planes and off them. And you, as the viewer, are right there with them, fully emotionally invested in that they make it - somehow make it through all the horror of war that is being thrown at them. 

The second, Manhunt is a story told of the hunt for John Wilkes Booth - the man who shot President Abraham Lincoln and the others involved in the plot. Like Masters of the Air, a little known story of American history and a side of America we rarely see portrayed with this level of detail. It's not the most pretty story they have in their country's history. People don't like to see their ugliness on screen in such a way, it's a brave thing to do, especially now when book bans run amuck. A good example of this is the film about J Edgar Hoover. It was directed by one of the greats, Clint Eastwood. Leonardo Di Caprio and Judi Dench both turn in Oscar worthy performances and it's a cleverly told story. The trouble is, it tells a few too many home truths about the man who created the Federal Bureau of Investigation and it was quietly shelved to one side.

Once again, there is a top cast - Mr Boyle, fresh from portraying Lieutenant Crosby portrays the hunted man and Tobias Menzies - doing fine work in this series as well, as his most ardent pursuer as Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War. Funny how half the cast of these American series at the moment have an Irishman and an Englishman as the two leads. Anyway, it's a great thriller - three episodes have been released already and I'm most definitely looking forward to the rest of the show. Writing and editing definitely at a high level and the series is all the more better for it when you're not kept waiting for the next part of the story to begin and keep you enthralled.

As can be expected with most series when the historical facts run dry, one has to rely on the imagination of the writers to fill in the gaps or to use the more cinematically logical of the options when it comes to creating a moment that wasn't extensively documented. Some might cry BS at some moments but the fact of it is, not everything was written down. That said some of it was and they definitely researched this story  and got all the details to paint a vivid picture of history. The last time the amount of detail was this well done was Robert Redford's film The Conspirator, once again something that was so studiously ignored by the awards when it chose to shine a light on what most people would rather forget.

So in conclusion, time well spent watching both or either of these series. Diamonds in the rough, if you will.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Film Review: Moneyball

Most of the sports films that have been made, have had very Hollywood plot lines. It was almost a recipe. Underdog team/coach/player/ whatever, trying to do something. A few montages of things going badly, then a winning formula, or new coach/player that tells them "they just have to believe in themselves" or teaches them how to work together with a few gimmicks. Which means, when you watch a well written film like Moneyball, you are completely unprepared by the realism and length of film that really tells you the true story. Or close to it, at least. With Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillan (Mr Zaillan wrote screenplays for The Interpreter, American Gangster and Clear and Present Danger) writing the screenplay, Brad Pitt portraying the character listed and the direction is tight and without any excess scenes, Bennet Miller was nominated for an Academy Award for his work with the film Capote - its a film worth watching for the all of the above and the finished product that
Read more

Film Review: Theater Camp

 In the middle of year six, I started attending Helen O'Grady's Drama Academy. Typical education sneakiness of actually teaching kids the skills to enable them to be confident out in the "real world" and with the fun bonus of how to project your voice while simultaneously messing about on the "stage" and acting out improvisation prompts and at the end of each year, a whole play. Nearly seven years, growing and learning in community buildings, after school during term time.  Good times all round. And it was definitely part of the draw card for me, for this new film, set at a summer theatre camp that beautifully illustrates the allure of performing on stage, telling stories and bringing them to life, for both the kids that attend and the teachers - and it's hard to tell who is the more committed or passionate about the craft. It's clearly a labour of love for Molly Gordon, Ben Platt, Noah Galvin and Nick Lieberman - all four wrote it, the first three a
Read more

TV Series Review: Strike

For as long as there have been mysteries, there have been people to solve them. Private detectives, police people, consulting detectives, army types, Mi5, Mi6, spooks, G-Men, CIA, its easy to get lost in the myriad of them all. Which makes it all the harder for a new one to stand out from the rest. Cormoran Strike, ex-army, fits the bill of the usual with an interesting character and mysterious backstory that gets tantalisingly dripped out and sprinkled in with the case of the week, but what makes this character different and stand out from the rest, for me at least, is his sense of humour. Plenty of detective films/series have one, but sometimes it just the plot with the comedic elements, or the characters themselves. Not both, like this one. And another element that goes hand in hand - the humanity. Both Strike and his new receptionist/assistant, Robin Ellacott - have it, but not overly so, or barely showing. Its a real person, people that they're portraying here and th
Read more