Cheapo DVD Review: Warbirds (2008)

Starring:

Jamie Ellen Mann

Brian Krause

Tohoru Masamune

Shauna Rappold

Lucy Faust

Caleb Michaelson

Gizza Elizondo

Jon McCarthy

Stephanie Honore

The Pacific, 1945

  A group of Japanese soldiers open a cave and find lots and lots of really big eggs. Since none of them have ever seen a monster film, they make a fatal mistake by not immediately sealing the cave back up and running away. 

  Three months later, an all-female  aircraft ferrying team are given new orders. "Take this modified B29 from here to here. Do not look at the cargo. You will be accompanied by a small team of macho GIs and their officer who seems to have a major rod up his ass.  PS. Do not look at the cargo. "

  Thanks to an encounter with something unknown but hostile, the B29 is forced to put down on a flyspeck Pacific island. This is currently occupied by a handful of Japanese and an awful lot of flying reptiles that have developed a taste for Long Pig Tartare.

 Our heroes and heroines must get their plane back in working order, get the hell off the island and complete their mission.

   Of course the Japanese and pterodactyls have their own ideas about that...

When I saw the DVD cover I immediately thought of this:

...and at that point my inner 9-year old started jumping up and down shouting "WW2 Fighters vs Dinosaurs!  WW2 Fighters vs Dinosaurs! I need to see this! Buy it! Buy it! Buy it!"

  Meanwhile my inner 43 year old cynic was trying to tell me "It's a low budget Creature Feature. It's obviously going to be shite....And you're not listening to me are you? Bloody buy it then. See if I care."

  With my sense of reason currently reduced to passive-aggressive mutterings, I bought "Warbirds" and headed for home. 

 Given a few bad experiences lately,  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the cover does bear some resemblance to the actual film.
 Or to put it another way: Yes, you do get to see WW2 aircraft fight Pterodactyls!

 Admittedly the Aircraft are CGI. Conspicuously so, in fact.

Fair enough. Real B29s are probably a pig to get insured

But I can't help noticing that the pterodactyls are significantly smaller than they appear on the  DVD cover.

 Still nasty but not the honking great dragons you're led to expect.

The machine v beast battles are not as good as they could have been, either. 

  And the producers are clearly hoping you don't ask inconvenient questions, the most obvious being "How are flying lizards able to chase and catch up to aircraft anyway?"

    Back on the ground there is the usual drama you'd expect from a wildly disparate group sharing living space with something carnivorous. Case in point.

 The feisty Maxine "Max" West. Independent modern woman.

Colonel Toller. Mission orientated Man's Man

Not surprisingly, these two spend the entire film butting heads and there's a definite possiblity of one putting a bullet into the other at some point. At least the producers resist the temptation to pair them off romantically, realising that it would just be too much of a stretch.  Instead two supporting characters get their own tacked-on romantic sub-plot.

They're nice but... you couldn't have got me earrings instead?

The other human inhabitants are a trio of Japanese soldiers. Initially relations are somewhat tense. 

Their leader seems to have retained his sense of humour though.

  Interestingly,you'd expect hardass Toller and the sardonic Captain Ozu to be painted in shades of "Asshole"  - and they do have their moments - but you get the impression that both men know their duty and intend to perform it as best they can. Bonus points then, for not playing to the cliches too much.

   The acting is decent enough, possibly better than the film deserves. The direction could have been better. The direction of the dogfights could have been a lot better. Sorry, but they're what I bought the bloody DVD for in the first place.

 And unless you're a bit of a dimbulb, you probably worked out what the cargo is as soon as it was mentioned...

So to sum up, "Warbirds" is a decent idea that desperately needed more budget to reach the intended goals. Not quite the film I wanted to see, not quite the film I was afraid it might be.

How much did I pay for this?   £5

Was it worth it?  Well it kept me moderately entertained for a bit, so yes. 

I will leave you with the American DVD cover, which is even more blatantly taking the piss.

 Oh look. A monster that isn't in the film fighting aircraft that aren't in the film either.

Here's the trailer.

 

That's all folks