In 1939, as Hitler and Germany ran roughshod over Eastern Europe, many people escaped, including Czech pilots who joined up with the British Royal Air Force to fight the Nazis. Jan Sverak's moving war drama, DARK BLUE WORLD, details the story of one such group of Czech pilots who are at first laughed at by their British superiors until they prove themselves in the air. Ondrej Vetchy stars as Franta Slama, the father figure to this motley group of men who desperately want to win back their country. Krystof Hadek plays Karel Vojtisek, Franta's young daredevil protegee who falls in love with an older British woman, Susan (Tara Fitzgerald), whose soldier husband is missing in action. When Franta and Susan grow close, everything threatens to erupt. Sverak, whose previous film was the Oscar-winning KOLYA, has crafted a beautiful film filled with believable, complex relationships, well-drawn characters, and plenty of finely choreographed air-battle scenes between the young, headstrong Czechs and the perfectly organized Nazis. The acting is excellent, especially the love triangle of Hadek, Vetchy, and Fitzgerald, and terrific support is provided by Oldrich Kaiser as Machaty, the piano-playing Gable look-alike. The film's politics are based on real events; when the Czech pilots who flew for the RAF returned home, they were treated as the enemy, not as heroes, and Sverak intercuts harrowing scenes from 1950 in which the pilots who survived the war are subject to jail and torture in their own land.

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