DARK BLUE WORLD (12, 112 mins) Starring Ondrej Vetchy, Krystof Hadek, Tara Fitzgerald. Now showing at Cineworld, Swindon

Overpaid, over-sexed, and over here. No, not the Yanks the Czechs.

Czechoslovakia may not have played such a major part in World War Two as the United States, but many of its men were heavily involved in the conflict, fighting for the Allies.

So while the bit about them being overpaid may not be true, they were certainly over here and, according to Dark Blue World, they liked their rumpy-pumpy.

Frantisek (Vetchy), an experienced father figure type, and the baby-faced Karel(Hadek) flee Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and head for England to do their bit for the war effort as fighter pilots.

Training and the occasional air battle keep them on their toes, but there are other distractions and the homesick, lovelorn duo soon fall for the charms of lonely housewife Susan (Fitzgerald), who provides one corner of what becomes a bitter love triangle.

There is a good story in here somewhere and unfortunately it's the romantic strand that gets in the way. The English adventures and there are some good aerial sequences of the Czech heroes are punctuated with flash-forwards, when we get glimpses of Frantisek in a labour camp in post-war Czechoslovakia, where the nasty Nazis have gone but the no less repressive Communists are in charge, creuelly treating the returning heroes as villains.

Dark Blue World isn't as dark as it sounds, but there is a streak of melancholy running throughout the film. As you'd expect in a war film, tragedy and despair lurk around every corner and the Czechs have a right to feel hard done by.

But the most interesting aspect of Frantisek's story what happened to him after the war is glossed over.

On the plus side, Vetchy and Hadek give affecting performances, director Jan Sverak evokes wartime England superbly, and the Spitfires and Hurricanes look magnificent.

Rating: 6 out of 10