‘Masters of the Air’ series review: Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks’ WWII epic is a long-format masterpiece
It’s long, sobering, brutal and unrestrained; Apple TV+’s 9-episode World War II saga, ‘Masters of the Air,’ is a visual spectacle unlike anything put to screen before
(Originally published in The Hindu on February 02, 2024)
Pause halfway into Masters of the Air, Apple TV+’s gargantuan 9-episode epic, and the word you might be hunting for is tenacity, a quality so impressive and hence so rare to find these days. A World War II saga about airmen putting their resilient best in the face of war and death should naturally tell you all about grit, bravado, the human spirit, and the despicability of war, but what also doesn’t miss to amaze you is the sheer filmmaking mastery at display behind all that.
Certainly inching towards becoming a modern-day masterpiece, Masters of the Air is classic television storytelling with pristine visual effects — thanks to its mammoth production value — and a star cast who give their all and beyond. It follows the story of the 100th Bomb Group of the United States Eighth Air Force in 1943, as they take on the unthinkable job of bombing targets in Nazi Germany, all the while taking on the tyranny of anti-aircraft bombs (called flaks) and Nazi fighters on Messerschmitt Bf 109s.
Throughout the series, there’s a sense of dread as every second conceals the possibility of a horrifying fate for these soldiers. Watching your screen fill with bloodied bodies and hundreds of these B17 bombers (they call them ‘forts’), some blown to pieces, is bound to…
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