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.
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.