Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The best film of its genre., 13 Nov 2006
Written by two airmen who lived the story and made at a time before revisionists lost the plot, this film accurately portrays life for the airmen during the early part of the American daylight bombing campaign, initially over France and then the first raids over Germany. The characters and bomber group are all ficticious but the real people on whom they are based can easilly be identified by anyone with a reasonable knowledge of the history.
Technically the film is very accurate but with a few blunders : American scenary like a plank-built railway station and picket fences, several of the "enemy" fighters are actually Spitfires and P47's and some of the airplanes are B17G's instead of B17F's.
The acting varies from stiff to brilliant, with Peck delivering an oscar-worthy performance. Camera work and direction are very good.
On another level the film is an excellent study of military leadership methods and styles. It is also a basic lesson in warfare which the west seems to have forgotten in the 1950's.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A brilliant mood piece for students of leadership, 7 Sep 2007
Forget the war (there's no bloodshed), forget the action (that's limited), forget sex - the nearest we get is Gregory Peck's thigh and there is not a woman in the film! - what Darryl F Zanuck's masterpiece shows is the positive attributes of great leadership along with the challenges it faces. It also exposes the leader as a 'friend' as a weak and ultimately failing approach. This film was designed to show leadership in its toughest environment and it achieves this wonderfully - remember it's based on fact so it has relevance where many other films fall down (Braveheart, Jerry Maguire etc) which are so far removed from any origins they are no longer connected to achievable outcomes.
Watch the nuances of expression - with no music to mask these, they are raw and meaningful.
Some amazing one-liners 'I didn't ask you to ask me....' 'Spit it out, with the bark on...' etc
A must for any aspiring Leader! - watch it at least 3 times to start to fully appreciate its complexity and subtlety, with the lessons it holds.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent WWII film: Tough minded and not too preachy, 18 Jun 2007
This has got to be one of the best movies based on the WWII experience. The story line is simple. A U. S. bomber group based in England is taking too many losses flying daylight runs against the Germans. It's failing to achieve the results it should and morale is drifting down. It could infect other bombing groups. The commanding officer is replaced by a tough-minded, no nonsense brigadier general who is utterly dedicated to winning the war. He uses harsh tactics, discipline and grinding practice to transform what was close to being a group of losers into an effective, cohesive force. The cost to the war effort was worth it; the cost to him was too high. Gregory Peck plays Brigadier General Frank Savage in one of his best performances. The movie itself is almost unrelentingly grim until we realize that the group is coming through, even as we see Savage begin to break apart.
The point of the film is summed up in two speeches. The first is by Major General Ben Pritchard (Millard Mitchell) to Savage as he tells him why he's going to replace Colonel Keith Davenport (Gary Merrill), a man they both respect, with Savage. "We're fighting all over the world. Every theater commander is screaming for crews and equipment...Our problem right now narrows down to one group. If the 918th folds it can spread to the other three groups. It can fold the whole deal...I guess I don't have to tell you what's coming, Frank. I'm going to have to ask you to take nice young boys and fly them until they can't stand it, then to take them out, put them back in and fly them again. We've got to try to find out just what a maximum effort is..."
Savage takes command and moves to impose his will and standards on the group. One of his first actions is to call the air crews together to tell them to suck it up. "I don't have a lot of patience," he says. "with this 'what are we fighting for' stuff. We're in a war, a shooting was. We've got to fight. And some of us have got to die. Now I'm not telling you not to be afraid. Fear is normal. Stop worrying about it...and yourselves. Stop making plans. Forget about going home. Consider yourselves already dead. Once you accept that idea it won't be so tough."
We're 30 minutes into the movie before Savage takes over. All that time has been spent establishing the situation, getting to know the crews and what they go through every time they fly and survive a mission. And, through Pritchard, what the bigger issues are. Once Savage takes over, however, the movie focuses on Savage and the men, the way he deals with them, the standards he insists on, the techniques he uses to shame or force them to accept what they must do.
The movie climax begins with their first bombing run over Germany. The sequence takes about 20 minutes and is built up of actual aerial combat footage and realistic staged scenes. There's no music. All we have is the muffled drone of the engines, flak blossoming and German fighters diving through the bomber formations. One by one bombers are hit and go down. Some of the crews can be seen bailing out, sometimes they don't make it. The formation keeps going toward the target. It's a harrowing sequence.
This is a tough minded movie. It has none of the Hollywood patriotic bombast exemplified by all those WWII John Wayne movies (as good as some of them are) or the Hollywood post traumatic stress syndrome exemplified by many of the Viet Nam films. It simply shows without too much preaching what happened to a WWII bomber group that started to fall apart and then was brought back up, and shows what happened to the men.
This is a first-rate film. The DVD transfer (the movie was filmed in black and white) looks very good.
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