I must tell you up front that I have a prejudice towards this film, as I love airplane movies--particularly WWII air films. So, when I saw this on the queue for Netflix, I thought I had to see it--especially since I am familiar with the famed fighter-bomber, the Mosquito. It was an amazingly able and agile plane--one of the best of the war, though it's seldom talked about today.

David McCallum stars in this film. If the name isn't familiar, he was one of the stars of the 1960s show "The Man From UNCLE". Unfortunately, he really wasn't given a personality in the film--he was there, but not much more.

The story is about a Mosquito squadron. Their job will now be to bomb a rocket production facility. However, it will take absolute precision bombing using very odd bouncing bombs--much like smaller versions of the ones used to blow up the dams in the Ruhr Valley (for more on that, see the excellent film "Dam Busters"). But there's a hitch---the Germans are anticipating it and have moved all the shot down Mosquito crews to this location--daring the Brits to carry out this raid and kill their own men.

The action is generally good, but due to a lack of availability, the German fighters are actually slow-moving transport/observation planes. At times, some of these planes are models and move in impossible ways.

And, considering how much better the flying sequences were in "The Battle of Britain" (also 1969),I could see how this film might have been overshadowed. There also is a bit of predictability towards the end--with a few clichés among the escaped prisoners. Overall, a decent movie that's worth watching but also one that is far from a must-see.

MOSQUITO SQUADRON is an average little war film about the British efforts to blow up a German base in France which is responsible for developing the technology used to bomb London and other British cities. It's a film that's pretty derivative of other movies which have come before such as THE DAM BUSTERS and it's also a rather uneven viewing experience, although there's much that's worthwhile here too.

The cast is somewhat unremarkable aside from lead actor David McCallum. McCallum is fresh off his success in America in THE MAN FROM UNCLE here and he delivers a good performance as the dedicated young pilot who feels that he needs to win out no matter what. His allies are all well cast and there's a priggish turn from the ever-imposing Charles Gray as the commodore, but too much of the screen time is taken up with McCallum's love for Suzanne Neve as the wife of a dead co-pilot. I appreciate the tragedy in such a situation but it really slows the film down at times when it should be flying along.

Footage of the planes at work and dropping their bouncing bomb payloads are the best part of the movie. The climactic action sequences are well handled and readily exciting and the dated nature of some of the effects, in particular the back projection, is easy to forgive. With a little more drive in the flagging midsection, MOSQUITO SQUADRON could have been something great; as it stands it's an average little film.

At a time when many a star-studded and big-budgeted WWII actioner emerged, this modest effort seemed definitely like second-tier material – offering customary but efficient thrills and decent spectacle, somewhat in the vein of 633 SQUADRON (1964)…with which it shares much of the plot and action footage!

In this respect, the film also owes its German secret weapon to OPERATION CROSSBOW (1965) and its bouncing bombs to THE DAM BUSTERS (1955); no wonder, then, that the end result feels awfully contrived (particularly at the climax, when successive to a couple of failed attempts, it has a wounded pilot wilfully crash smack into the warehouse where the rockets are manufactured!). Besides, the narrative tends too often towards romantic/sentimental complications: the relationship between the two leads being obstructed, for one thing, by the hero having been the best friend of the woman’s husband and, later, by the knowledge he shares with her maimed brother that the man had survived an air crash but is being kept prisoner in a château marked for obliteration during an Allied air raid led by the hero himself!

The credentials are strictly below-par (the score, typically an asset in this type of flick, attempts to be rousing but succeeds only in being bland) and the casting a mix of TV actors (THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.’s David McCallum – who delivers a brooding performance – and Suzanne Neve from U.F.O.) and colorful character performers (Charles Gray as the pompous yet stern Air Commodore and Vladek Sheybal as the erudite but fishy Nazi officer in charge of the prison/plant fortress). Mind you, while being no great shakes (and probably instantly forgettable),the film proves mildly engaging – to say nothing of eminently watchable – along the way; when all is said and done, there are certainly far worse titles to spend 90 minutes of your life on…