Review of The Dam Busters (1955)
A British engineer braves the bureaucracy to build a special kind of bomb for destroying Ruhr valley dams as a means of decimating German industry in WW2. Once the project is approved, focus shifts to the creation and training of a special squadron for delivering the experimental munitions at unprecedented low altitude, in the dark.
War movie released 12 years after the specific historic raid it depicts, with some details still secret enough to censor.
Imperial nostalgia is positive here; the word “old” in social contexts is clearly synonymous with good, and the hero calls his loyal dog Nigger, played by a dog of the same name. However, The Dam Busters ends on an interesting note: The commander of the mission goes off into the distance alone, exhausted, to inform a lot of families. Appropriately, the real events were not so important as this tribute makes them seem.
References here: Star Wars (1977).