Degree7
England, 1942. The 918th bomber regiment, flying into Europe to deliver their payload to German targets, is a group suffering from low morale and even worse luck, with many pilots coming back dead, injured, or psychologically scarred from their daylight raids that are only growing tougher. Enter General Savage, played by Peck, who believes the problem lies with their CO, Colonel Davenport, a good soldier who has become too close to his men and thus lacks the necessary strong-arm discipline. Savage relieve the Colonel of his command, and brings the 918th under his wing, attempting to whip this hard luck group into shape. The film deals with the theme of leadership under stress, and how a commander will toe the line between protecting his men and sending them to their deaths. For a psychological drama on the effects of war on the chain of command, the film is undoubtedly good. Any military buff or WWII geek will get his worth for watching it. But for those interested in the actual bombing missions, bad news, as there is one bombing run and it only lasts for ten minutes in the last fourth of the movie. It consists of genuine war footage spliced in with the actors, and while it's certainly an effective sequence, it arrived too little too late to save the story, as I had already lost interest. The issue I took with the film was my lack of connection with any of the characters in the squadron, save for Savage. In the beginning, we are introduced to a man we think is the protagonist, who has a flashback to the events that sets the plot in motion; but it turns out he's only a side character who hardly has an effect on the story. If any character is the main one, it should have been Peck's Savage, but we don't meet him until twenty minutes in. There is also a distinct lack of notable personalities in the bomber crews Savage is attempting to win over. Essential scenes that would be obligatory in the telling of the tale are skipped over or told from an offhand source. In a pivotal moment, Savage is convinced his men will transfer out instead of staying. But another officer rushes in and informs him that all the men forgave their transfer orders, and opted to stay with the group. Surely this would have been a case where we should be shown this, and not just told in an anticlimactic fashion. Perhaps seeing the men all threatening to leave, but one brave soul tears up his transfer order, and the rest soon follow in an honourary echo. But because we never see this (indeed, barely see any of the grunts; most of the runtime is devoted to Peck's static character) the result of Savage's salvation is not convincing. Surely this imaginary scene I described would have given me a character in the group with a justifiable personality, who I would later then care about as much as Savage apparently does when they bite the dust at the end. But no, the 918th are just a faceless mass of men who we get glimpses of, but never get to really know. There are a couple choice scenes of men venting about why he's a bad commander, but we never get to see Savage do anything resentful or in any serious conflict with the group. The moments where bonds are forged and brotherhood is found, the battle scenes, are nonexistent except for one. The worst thing we see him do is close the bar for a night. There is also a subplot where he gives command to a deadbeat officer, in charge of a plane called the Leper Colony, and filled with the worst crewmen in the bomber group. Savage threatens to to rub his "face in the dirt" with this detail. But this relationship is soon forgotten by the director as well. It is at least resolved later in a touching scene at the hospital between Savage and the officer. It is revealed the man went through great personal sacrifice, having had to ditch the plane in the English Channel, and flying three missions with a fractured vertebrae. Again, the film makes a point of not throwing any of this exciting, hair raising action, but are instead just told about it. This starts to make the film bleed into monotonous scenes of indistinguishable sludge after a while. As the movie drags on, we do not get any of the bomber crew members showing up as major characters, and we don't see them struggling to get on with the General even as he flies on offscreen missions with them. All we get is exposition in the officer's club, with the generals and majors deciding on how best to run the unit. It's all very meticulous and cold, but lacks the humanity to make me care. The climax of the film involves General Savage having a nervous breakdown, as he ironically becomes too attached to his men for his own good. Let me go on to say that this is soon resolved in an almost arbitrary fashion, and the ending is as carefree and bland as could possibly be. For a detailed look into a commander's effort to run a regiment, there is much for the war buff. But the bomber crews seem to take a backseat to one man's struggle, and this just isn't enough to keep me invested for a two hour runtime.6.9/10
Ric-7
I ask myself how I could have improved on this film. I can't think of anything. So I give it a 10.There are perhaps five minutes total of actual combat, and the remaining two hours are devoted to exploring the humanity of the individual fliers. There are no flashbacks to establish characters, no extended reminiscences to furnish a backstory. There is simply the drama of soldiers placed in the immediacy of battle.I saw this film for the first time today. I'd avoided it for decades: another "war" film, one that a TV series was made out of. (Yawn.) Boy, was I wrong.I won't give away anything in the film. I will say look for examples of its amazing humanity in Dean Jagger's performance--the line about trying to remember the faces, and the line about the letters he had to write. But Jagger has no show-stopping soliloquy--just perfect. And then there was the bit about a conversation with a nurse in the hall.And I noticed that the theme and basic plot set-up for this film were exactly the same as Joseph Heller's Catch-22.
