Had Bertolt Brecht and the Merchant-Ivory team been placed in the same room and asked to come up with a wartime love story this might have been it.

The film takes place in two time frames - most of the action takes place in the Second World War charting the friendship between two Czech airmen, Frantisek (Ondrej Vetchý) and Karel (Krystof Hádek), who become romantically involved with the same woman, Susan (Tara Fitzgerald), after escaping to Britain and joining the RAF.

Intermittently, it cuts to a point later in time, when RAF pilots returning home were imprisoned by the occupying soviets (for fear of having developed un-communist beliefs). Former SS guards look over them.

The first time-frame is vibrant, full-of-colour, the other dark, alienating and grim. The two eras sit together like oil and water.

There is a lot of waiting in this film. It opens with the Czech airmen waiting for the invading Germans to take over their airfield and planes. Once the two pilots have escaped to England there is a lot of waiting to get airborne. Frantisek's girlfriend is waiting for him to come back to Prague, Susan is waiting for her naval officer husband to return and after the war the imprisoned pilots wait for their freedom. After the two friends fall out, you find yourself waiting for the time when they will make up.

Most of the waiting takes place at the airfield. The RAF, more stiff-upper than tally-ho are an insipid bunch, wallpaper for the unfolding drama of the love triangle. The smiling, uniformed girls from the WRAF, who the young Czech pilots take turns to tentatively chat up, are barely more coloured in than their male counterparts. Only Charles Dance as the moustached Wing Commander manages to turn his few flat lines into something memorable.

The leads are in the same boat. There is little criticism to make of their performances, they are weighed down by a pedestrian story.

One corollary of all the waiting is that when the action happens it is all the more exciting. The dogfight sequences are done well (apparently archive footage of real WW2 planes was used), the cinema filling with the din of engines as the Spitfires and Messerschmitts twist, dive and strafe each other and a disembodied English voice on the radio urges over the excited babble of Czech "Will you talk in English!"

The cinematography is lavish. The natural surroundings of the airfield, draped in early morning mist, look too lush and fecund for a country gripped by a grim war. It is a very realistic paradox, but when you start noticing the way the mist hangs on the grass you're struggling. In truth, after showing early promise the film limps to an end. The waiting is in vain.