✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
United Kingdom, Israel, United States · 2015
1h 30m
Director Roberta Grossman
Starring Paul Reubens, Jd Roth-round, Harold Livingston
Genre Adventure, Documentary, History, War
Please login to add films to your watchlist.
This documentary follows the story of a group of foreign pilots, including American World War II veterans, who volunteered for Israel in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Telling the pilots' stories with family interviews and state-of-the-art reenactments, this film brings a chapter of international history to life.
The New York Times by Ben Kenigsberg
These fond recollections of derring-do hail from a different era, and the movie’s one-sided view of history is bound to start arguments. The film is best appreciated as a straightforward testimonial: old war buddies’ hurrah against anti-Semitism.
The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck
Above and Beyond pays well-deserved homage to these men who helped create the Israeli Air Force and ensured the survival of the burgeoning nation. It's a wonder that it took nearly seven decades for the story to be recounted in feature documentary form.
Though somewhat marred by cheesy docudrama re-enactments, the film (produced by Steven Spielberg’s sister Nancy) is nutty, dramatic, surprising and above all inspiring.
Arizona Republic by Randy Cordova
Above and Beyond is a straightforward, rah-rah documentary.
A moving and entertaining documentary about the young international volunteers who dashed to Israel in 1948 to create an Israeli Air Force.
Above and Beyond reps an uneasy combo of two very different kinds of documentary, one of them personalizing the past and the other “objectifying” political advocacy.
It will only be criticized — rightfully — for its skirting over the resulting plight of Palestinian refugees, but Grossman is surely capable of making an equally absorbing, entertaining film on that subject.
Los Angeles Times by Sheri Linden
Grossman doesn't step back for a broader, contextualizing view of the Middle East; the film contains a single comment on the 1948 war's ramifications for displaced Palestinians. But as an oral history of the pilots' experiences, it's indispensable.
It may channel the loose, adrenaline-fueled lives of pilots, but the film's inconsistent, often impassive study of this intriguing real-life adventure feels half-told.
In space no one can hear you scream.
In an apocalyptic future, two rebels join forces.
Fearless lives forever
A failed stand-up comedian is driven insane, turning to a life of crime in chaos in Gotham City.
Holmes... Enola Holmes
Spider-Man faces a crisis from across the multiverse.