Review of Captains of the Clouds (1942) by Trent M — 19 Feb 2008

Cagney in Technicolor. Cagney in the cockpit. Cagney in ...Canada? An enjoyable movie, but it's actually too long, with much of the running time spent establishing Cagney and the rest of the bush pilots as bush pilots.

Brenda Marshall's story is thrown away as fast as Cagney's $4000. This is another of those movies where Cagney has problems with authority and his own ego, which inevitably get other people maimed and killed.

We all know he'll learn his lesson and come around, but will he get out of it alive? I make it sound like a bland formula movie, and while it IS a formula movie, it's starring Cagney and thus can never be bland.

I liked the flying sequences, even though there may have been too many of them and some of the model shots were rather obvious (not something that you should focus on in a movie of this age). For fans of Jimmy and flight enthusiasts, this is, at the very least a fine film to have playing in the background while fixing a meal as it does not demand your total attention.