Watching Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ World War II drama is like visiting a history museum with an older relative.

In the rattling, chilly insides of a B-17 bomber, 10 men undertake a mission I’d never accept: They must pilot through a sky full of anti-aircraft flak, past harrying enemy fighter planes; they must freeze in the upper atmosphere, breathing through leather oxygen masks; they must mentally absorb the inevitable hits to the airplane and the terrible injuries to the men inside, then adjust their tactics to compensate for the loss of those airplane parts and men; they must make the (pen-and-paper!) calculations necessary to locate the target, drop the bombs, and then get the hell back to base—or else bail out, into occupied territory.