Masters of the Air review: Barry Keoghan shows there is more to him than high-concept shiftiness

Barry Keoghan was still comparatively unknown when he signed up for Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’s Masters of the Air (available on Apple TV+ from today) in 2021. Three years later, Apple’s $250 million war epic finally zooms on to streaming – and with the Dublin actor’s public image having acquired a very different hue in the aftermath of the Banshees of Inisheerin and, especially, Saltburn.

Wonky Mersey-accent aside, Keoghan was chillingly, thrillingly weird in the latter. As the internet was quick to point out, he was the most unsettling component in a movie precision-tooled to have the viewer wondering if they were watching a film or hallucinating. So it’s mildly jarring to see him in an entirely different role in Masters of the Air, an unashamedly rousing tribute to the US Air Force crews who led the bombing campaign against Nazi Germany in the final years of the second World War.

Keoghan plays Lt Curtis Biddick, a flyboy with the 100th Bomb Group of the Eight Air Force – known as the “bloody hundredth” because of its shocking casualty rate. His character is, obviously, American. To that end, Keoghan has attempted a mid-20th century inflection, which at points veers on Bugs Bunny impersonation. He has channelled his voice through his nose, and if he is never 100 per cent convincing as one of America’s Silent Generation, it’s an improvement on whatever he was going for in Saltburn (Liverpool, by way of Lucan?).

The big star is Austin Butler. He made Masters of the Air before bagging an Oscar nomination for Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis or his casting as bald baddie Feyd-Rautha in Dune Part Two. You can see he’s a a-lister in the making. He goes full James Dean as a charismatic Air Force Major with the best hair in the entire theatre of war. You could almost pretend you are watching fan fiction in which Elvis helps bring down Hitler.

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Masters of the Air is a spiritual successor to early 2000s epic Band of Brothers. Released two days before September 11th and likewise produced by Spielberg and Hanks, that series painted a heroic portrait of American GIs on the long march to Berlin. It was also a shop window for an upcoming generation of actors – including a young Michael Fassbender.

The same “ensemble energy” ripples through Master of the Air, adapted from Donald Miller’s 2007 bestseller, Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany. Butler and Keoghan command their share of screen time. But the show’s momentum flows through its huge corps of pilots, gunners, mechanics and ground crew (and a navigator portrayed by west Belfast actor Anthony Boyle). It is by hopping from character to character that True Detective/No Time To Die director Cary Joji Fukunaga (overseeing the first four instalments) coveys the sheer scale of the conflict.

That enormous budget plays its part, too. With Apple’s financial muscle and Spielberg and Hanks’ reputations at its back, Masters of the Air conjures sweeping, thrilling set-pieces. We see bombers whooshing over the occupied continent, flak shells exploding in ominous puffs of black. It feels like another world – one Masters of the Air brings grippingly to life. It also suggests that, creepy though Barry Keoghan was in Saltburn, there is more to him than high-concept shiftiness. He fits comfortably into the vast canvas of Masters of the Air, helping to keep airborne what will surely go down as one of the most epic projects to soar across the small screen this year.