Aces High is a 1976 war film directed by Jack Gold, starring Malcolm McDowell, Peter Firth, Christopher Plummer and Simon Ward.

An Anglo-French production, the film is based on the 1928 play Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff, with additional material from fighter ace Cecil Lewis's memoir, Sagittarius Rising.

Aces High turns the trench warfare of Journey's End into the aerial battles fought in 1917 by the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) above the Western Front.

Seeing the excitement the young man has about flying with his hero, Captain "Uncle" Sinclair tells Croft he might find Gresham "changed".

Gresham is conflicted about having a younger man worship him as a hero as he relies on alcohol to continue being a flying ace, something Croft might report to his older sister back home.

When Sinclair is killed in a photography mission Croft pilots, Gresham arranges to have him lose his virginity to a young French woman (prostitute) in Amiens.

He pitched the idea of remaking Journey's End with an air force background to British director Jack Gold, who had just made The Naked Civil Servant.

(Others included Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, a remake of Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Sweeney, Evil Under the Sun, Sergeant Steiner, Spanish Fly, To the Devil a Daughter, The Nat King Cole Story and Seven Nights in Japan.

[4]) Peter Firth and Christopher Plummer joined Malcolm McDowell, who agreed to appear in the film because Gold had such a good reputation among actors at the time.

[5] Exteriors were shot in Spain and Southern England with principal photography at Booker Airfield, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, as well as St Katharine Docks and Eton College.

[9] The production paid close attention to authenticity with First World War era equipment being used throughout the film such as the airfield facilities, barracks and motor transport.

[11] Some scenes are based on real RFC stories, such as pilots choosing between jumping to their deaths or burning alive in their aircraft (as they were not issued parachutes).

[13] Although the film reused some aerial sequences from The Blue Max (1966) and Von Richthofen and Brown (1971),[14] the producers shot their own flight scenes.

[9] The Sunday Telegraph wrote the film "contains a quarter of young actors whose enormous potential for stardom will, predictably, only be equalled by the inability of British studios to know what to do with it.

"[19] The Evening Standard felt the movie was "predictably good in the sky" but when it came to "asking for insight into the hearts and minds of the boy pilots of the Royal Flying Corps, it'll be a deep disappointment.