What a fantastic premise: A movie about the Berlin Airlift. It should have it all. Tragedy. Suspense. Comradeship. Rivals. Berliner Frauleins and tough US pilots. love and Tears. What we've got, is a film with none of the above. Heino Ferch tries to impersonate John Wayne or so, but he fails miserably. He acts so wooden, that at any given moment he should crack. He tries to play the tough guy, instead of being a tough guy! Why would Bettina Zimmermann's character fall in love with him? Cause they were throwing stones in a lake? Cause he brings her coal bricks? The SFX are very, very well done. Too much though. The hundreds or so planes over Berlin, look like an attack-fighter-formation-squadron rather than an organised airlift – as it actually was. Interestingly enough, the White House, the Kremlin, and General Lucius D. Clays office seem all to be one and the same dark and dusty set. Notice the same drapes, hanging deep down the windows, as if a protective shield against nuclear fallout. Why is almost every scene INSIDE dark and dusty? By the way, GENERAL LUCIUS D. CLAY, comes across as a small time, insecure, looser General, who doest trust in his own noble idea the airlift. He was very much the opposite. So you combine all those individual blunders and the result is a film with that builds toward no passion, no suspense and no historic accuracy. Sad, it started out so promising…
