Review of Air Force (1943) by Shoshanah K — 07 Jul 2013

I truly wish movie reviewers would STOP forcing pre-1960 "eggs" into post-1960 square egg crates!! If you can't put your touchie-feelie indoctrinations aside when critiquing classic films - don't review them...PLEASE! Enough with the condemnation of the "racially offensive slurs and inaccuracies" vis a vis the Japanese. If you had been seen or heard ringing your hands over this stuff on December 8, 1941, you'd have been locked in a loony bin - or shot as a traitor. This film - a superlative film in EVERY way was made a year and a half after 3000+ American naval personal had been ambushed and murdered by the Empire of Japan in a heinous attack unequaled until September 11, 2001. My father served in the Pacific in WW II, and said the Japanese were feared and hated because they were merciless, vicious and certainly NOT PC - they did not pity or spare any - men, women OR children. The POINT of this film was to laud our brave service men out there slogging around in the Pacific theater and to inspire other young men to sign up and join them. The plot, dialog, photography and acting is wonderful and I believe it ranks as one of the four greatest WW II films of all time: They Were Expendable; Air Force; 30 Seconds Over Tokyo and Saving Pvt. Ryan. Along with Resnais' Night and Fog documentary you have it pretty well summed up.

This film beautifully shows Hawks' gift for building camaraderie and unity of purpose in an often disparate and hostile group. The cast is superlative...then again, you could have Harry Carey (Sr) sit in front of a camera and read ten pages from the phone book and be witness to an Academy Award-worthy performance. By-the-way, His Sgt.Robbie White in this flick SHOULD have gotten him that very award - along with two or three other roles in his career. James Wong Howe's cinematography is just magnificent. We of the sophisticated CGI-generation of cineastes KNOW many of the flying scenes are done with models - but they are done so well it never detracts. Howe's ability to film much of the action "in the fuselage" of the Mary-Ann - giving the claustrophobic sense of an air crew confined, yet never so cramped as to not allow each crewman his space to act and react to events as they take place - is wonderful to watch.

Some have commented that the ending was "over-the-top". Maybe the highly technical, laser-beam-'em from 10 miles away style of modern warfare has clouded the ability of some to see that war in the 1940's was a much grittier, in-your-face proposition; one lucky break or just being in the right place at the right time was all that was needed to turn defeat into victory.

I love this movie and cheered through the whole thing. So c'mon folks...pack away your granola bars, haul down the Kumbayah flag and watch those dastardly Japs get the smack-down from some good old Yankee flyboys. Thanks, Howard - ya done good.