On M List of Movie Reviews

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Mosquito Squadron (1969)

Rate: 6
Viewed: 1/25

1/25: Although famous for the TV show The Man from U.N.C.L.E., David McCallum is an actor whom I'm not overly familiar with, so Mosquito Squadron is the first time I've seen him as a leading man.

David McCallum handles his role with ease by showing the right demeanor given the serious gravity of the situation. The last twenty minutes of the film is excellent with plenty of exciting action. It has a goldmine premise that asks two important questions: 1) Does it make sense to bomb a place which may kill their fellow RAF soldiers in order to end the war earlier and save hundreds of thousands of lives?; and 2) Should Quint let Beth fall in love with him without mentioning that her former beau Scotty isn't yet dead after all?

I like the concept of a plane carrying Highballs, yet what happened during the mission is odd despite the commanding officer declaring it a success. Let's replay the concept for a minute. The fliers were trained to release a Highball on time in order for it to roll correctly, leading me to think that the thing had to go inside the cave to blow up everything. Yet this never happened once at Château de Charlon with one of the three planes crashing atop the cave. The point is: if that's good enough, why not instead drop bombs the regular way?

Anyway, Mosquito Squadron has a lot of made-for-TV feel with a mostly undeveloped romance between Quint and Beth. When I started to play the video, I got confused at the beginning, which showed the exact same thing from Operation Crossbow, a film that I just saw a few days earlier. I thought for a minute whether or not I put the wrong DVD in the player. Some footage of 633 Squadron is also lifted. Elsewhere, the red car that David McCallum drove is a 1935 Godsal V8 Corsica.

All in all, Mosquito Squadron is a decent WWII British aviation picture.

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