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Show:		6.0
Picture:		7.0
Sound:		7.0
Extras:		6.0
Score:		6.0

Director(s):	Jason McKinley • Robert Kirk
Writer(s):	Cynthia Harrison, Brooks Wachtel, Doug Miller, Jason McKinley
Starring:	Phil Crowley
Genre:	Documentary • War
Website:	http://www.history.com/content/dogfights
Release Date:	October 27, 2009

List Price:	DVD - $62.99
Amazon:

Last week, I watched the film Patton again. For those of you who have not seen it, it is a biopic of General George Patton, who proudly proclaimed that he was going to use the guts of Germans to grease the treads of his tanks, after killing them "by the bushel". For him, an international conflict of the complexity and horror of World War II could easily be reduced to something about as serious as a particularly involving game of Space Invaders. It’s not hard to imagine him loving Dogfights. Though by all means a very instructive and engaging program, it is also a show that makes war seem like little more than a boy’s weekend adventure to airplane destruction camp.

Each episode in the two seasons of Dogfights (both of which are collected here) details a very specific battle, defined by two major characteristics: the setting (time and place) and the aircraft involved. Naturally, there’s a great emphasis on World War 2 here (this is the History Channel after all), but many different American conflicts are covered, from Vietnam to Desert Storm. Bit by bit, the show takes an event and constructs it from every conceivable angle (except, of course, that of the opposing side). There are bits of stock footage letting us know exactly what we might have been seeing had we been watching newsreels at the time, a number of interviews with the pilots of the era, and a good deal of digital re-enactments of major conflicts, as well as more minor narratives of close encounters with enemy aircraft. But all of that is subservient to only one need: the planes. It could be that I’m simply not much of a motorhead, but I’ve never encountered a piece of media that was so focused on minor technical details. While background is certainly given on why people are out in remote areas shooting at each other (although a certain amount of that has to be assumed that people would know), every tool at the History Channel’s disposal is utilized to let you know simply one thing: what it was like to fly that plane at the particular time. Short of reenacting the actual battles themselves, there’s not much more that they could have done to express the nuances between the different aircraft, and making a layman like me understand that there are in fact nuances between planes as well as between landscapes and opponents. On that level, well done.

The only questionable aspect is the presentation. I say questionable only because it will determine whether or not you want to hunker down the money for the set, just so nobody thinks I’m being moralistic or condescending. From the very instant each episode begins, Dogfights makes perfectly clear what its perspective is on each of these conflicts, which is the George Patton perspective. If that doesn’t tell you what I mean, the first few notes of music will let you know. Honestly, the most apt comparison that I can think of would come from the soundtrack of either Top Gun, one of the Rocky films, or the animated G.I. Joe. The announcer, who sounds as if he’s trying to get all the five year old boys in the room riled up, doesn’t exactly help. Granted, there may not have been a lot of pacifists who were really excited about the release of this box, but there is a definite character to this show that could both alienate and attract viewers in equal measure. Which category you fall into could probably be answered by the following question: did you think that Patton was a great big jackass or not? If the answer is no, then give the show a shot.

DVD Bonus Features

In addition to the series, the set also contains the feature-length documentary Dogfights of the Future, which is essentially the same thing save that it is speculative rather than historical. This changes the format of the show surprisingly little, but there are still the same reliable sources assuring us that, yes, the future will be filled with planes shooting at each other.