This Korean War-era film has all the trimmings as far as aerial combat is concerned. This is one of the few films which approaches this aspect of the war.
Kenneth Palmer
Great Jet Combat-I wanted more; above-average acting
My DVD movie collection does not yet exceed 10 titles, but I had to have this film that I first saw decades ago. As it seldom showed up on TV it was not in my videotape collection. The air combat sequences are as good or better than I remember but I thought there were more of them. Other than Top Gun, this is the only film I can recall where the air combat sequences were obviously flown by US military pilots. If more flying and interaction among the pilots had been substituted for the romantic subplot, I would have given it another star.
The planes shown as MIG 15s are actually F-84 Thunderstreaks, a Korean war era jet fighter-bomber manufactured by Republic Aviation. As my father was a Republic engineer in the 1950s and designed components of the F-84 (and also the Vietnam era F-105 Thunderchief) I immediately noticed this discrepancy. However this was probably the best option given the producers' obvious goal of showing real jet combat and in in no way detracts from the authenticity or exciitement of the flying sequences. As the film was made in 1958 at the height of the Cold War, I doubt there were sufficient MIGs available to film in air combat sequences in a movie made in the US. In one scene, the film shows about 20 MIGs (i.e. F-84s) flying in an echelon. The F-84 was probably chosen because its intake has a vertical divider, as does the MIG, and it is also a swept wing plane. I will watch most any film that emphasizes aviation or space (I bought The Right Stuff in the same order as this film). Accordingly my rating is based to an extent on my personal interests. Mitchum turns in an above-average performance in a role that is tailored to his tough guy with a human side personality (See e.g. Mitchum as General Norman Coda, commander of the 29th infantry division--my father's unit--in The Longest Day) and Wagner is entertaining as a slang-spewing, glory-seeking, neophyte, fighter jock who rubs Mitchum the wrong way as they compete to knock down enemy planes. For any Trekkies who may be reading this, I believe that actor Lee Phillips, Mitchum's wingman in the film, played opposite Frank Gorshin as half-black, half-white aliens in the brillant 1960s Star Trek episode that skewered racism.
An excellent air combat movie
If you enjoyed movies like "Memphis Belle" or even "Top Gun" then you will enjoy Robert Mitchum and Robert Wagner in "The Hunters". It is a good story, probabaly filmed at the time of the Korean war on location, and the DVD quality is amongst the best that I have encountered.
In The Enemy Below Robert Mitchum and Curt Jurgens are respectively captains of a U.S. destroyer and a German U-boat whose vessels come into conflict in the South Atlantic. Both are good men with a job to do, the script noting Jurgens' distaste for Hitler and the Nazis and engaging our sympathy with the German sailors almost as much as the Americans. Made at the height of the cold war of the 1950s, the film delivers a liberal message of co-operation wrapped inside some spectacular action scenes and a story which builds to a tense and exciting, moving finale. --Gary S. DalkinMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Robert Mitchum - Curd Jürgens Director(s): Dick Powell DVD Release Date: Released the 25 May 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Oliver Cromwell Jones, the black cook, is given a lot of screen time and the screen play treats him as an integral part of the mission. He is played by Ben Carter, one of the actors profiled in Donald Bogle's recent book BRIGHT BOULEVARDS, BOLD DREAMS; he was the agent for black Los Angeles actors who got in trouble with his clients because he often took the best parts and played them himself! This is definitely one of those cases, for he has a scene with James Gleason for which he should have been nominated for an Oscar, he's so good in the part--and it isn't one of Hollywood's wretched racially stereotypical parts, but one with real human feeling, dignity, comedy all mixed together. Gleason is super too.
However the picture really belongs to its headlining trio of stars,... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Archie Mayo DVD Release Date: Released the 25 May 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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John Wayne personally produced many of his '50s films, which is why some of them have languished in corporate limbo following his death. The High and the Mighty was one of his most popular vehicles (no pun intended). This long, necessarily sedentary drama aboard an endangered airliner is a CinemaScope bridge between 1932's Grand Hotel and 1970s disaster movies. Despite Wayne's iconic presence as a pilot--now copilot--who survived the plane crash that wiped out his family, it's an ensemble movie with an impressive cast: Robert Stack sharing the cockpit, Oscar® nominees Claire Trevor and Jan Sterling, Laraine Day, Robert Newton, Paul Kelly, John Qualen, Regis Toomey, the ubiquitous Paul Fix, and director William A. Wellman's good-luck character actor Douglas Fowley.... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): John Wayne - Claire Trevor - Laraine Day Director(s): William A. Wellman DVD Release Date: Released the 02 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Out of circulation for a quarter-century following the death of producer-star John Wayne, Island in the Sky is a tale of survival focused on the pilot (Wayne) and crew of a DC-3 forced to crashland somewhere in the uncharted Canadian wilderness, and the fellow airmen (Lloyd Nolan, James Arness, Andy Devine, Paul Fix) determined to find them before hunger and the 70-below winter do them in. The movie, set in the post-WWII era when military and commercial aviation were still intertwined, was written by bestselling novelist Ernest K. Gann and directed by William A. Wellman, an aviation-movie veteran whose Wings won the first-ever Academy Award (1927–28).
Wellman resolutely downplays the histrionics and conventional heroics; Wayne indulges in none of the macho... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): John Wayne - Lloyd Nolan Director(s): William A. Wellman DVD Release Date: Released the 02 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The offbeat casting of Cary Grant as a submarine captain pays off in this tense WWII underwater picture; he ably trades in his sophistication for the sweaty close quarters of an action movie. The mission? Infiltrate the mined harbor of Tokyo itself, a feat bookended by a brief confrontation in the Aleutians and a depth-charge chase through the open sea. Skipper Grant is supported by the usual stock crew of Navy melting-pot types, with John Garfield drawing duty as the resident dame-crazy fantasist. (Somebody forgot to put the saltpeter in his chow, apparently.) The solid action alternates with dialogue that tends toward the schmaltzy or jingoistic (the movie's become somewhat notorious for its unusually nasty propagandistic jabs at the Japanese enemy). Destination Tokyo was the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Cary Grant - John Garfield Director(s): Delmer Daves DVD Release Date: Released the 01 June 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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