Diagonaldi Very well executed

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

GarnettTeenage The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

inspectors71 Beyond Rock Hudson being, quite possibly, the perfect movie star- handsome movie star and P-51 Mustangs, there's pretty much nothing to recommend here. Battle Hymn doesn't know what it wants to be--a war movie, a testament to the healing power of Christianity, or a vanilla-ized biopic of a fighter pilot turned minister.Here's a pretty easy rule to understand: If you try to be a bunch of things at once, you'll probably fail at all of them.Battle Hymn is so completely bland in its treatment of USAF Colonel Dean Hess' search for how to jibe being a minister with being a warrior that about all you can really hang on to are the cute Korean kids milling and jabbering about and those incredible Mustangs. I saw Battle Hymn as a kid on TV. Once again, age has not been kind to a movie I liked (or in this case, sort of liked) way back when.Skip it.

The_Tropics Rock Hudson is in this so I had to get this on DVD & I'm very glad that I did. SPOILER: Due to what he accidentally does in the beginning of the story, you can feel his guilt, pain & need for redemption throughout the rest of the movie. Rock Hudson did an amazing job portraying this in the film based on actual events. You have a clear understanding as to why his life took the course that it did throughout the film. Another important element of this movie that stood out for me is that all the fighter pilots were of equal value, as if skin color didn't exist. That was very impressive & very refreshing to see and yet this is a film made in 1957. And what is it about Old Hollywood & older films that makes you feel like you are really there? It must be the lack of CGI. All the locations and air scenes are fantastic, brilliantly filmed!!

ksf-2 This war story opens with an introduction by Earle Partridge, an Air Force general, who starts telling the (true) story of Colonel Dean Hess in the Korean War. Hess had started out as a minister, but felt the need to contribute to the war effort, assigned to train the Korean fighter pilots. This assignment turned into a much bigger ordeal than anyone had planned on. This film is another project with Douglas Sirk directing Rock Hudson. Don DeFore is Major Skidmore. Viewers will know him from his roles on "Hazel" and Ozzie & Harriet. Pretty good entertainment... some religious discussions and lessons thrown in, as Hess had been a minister back home. This is based on Hess' autobiography, after all. Of course, either Alan Hale Senior or Alan Hale Junior has to be in every war movie made... in this one, it's Junior (Skipperrrrrr!) playing the Mess Sergeant. Also James Hong is in here somewhere as Major Chong. He was the maitre D in the Seinfeld Chinese restaurant episode... he would have been just 28 in "Hymn". Philip Ahn plays the old man "Lun"... he played the old, respected father or grandfather figure in MASH, Hawaii Five-O, and many many more films and TV series. For more details, see the entry on Dean Hess in Wikipedia.org. This is one of the four films on the Universal War Collection DVD set.

edwagreen Solid Rock Hudson vehicle dealing with a preacher's accidental bombing of an orphanage in a small German city during World War 11. The preacher, Dean Hess, played beautifully by Rock Hudson, comes back to the states following the war but is unable to fulfill his duties and reenlists for action in Korea 5 years later.It is through his work in Korea that Hudson is able to reaffirm his faith.Carl Benton Reid plays the town deacon. I remember Reid for playing Hudson's father-in-law in "One Desire" with the mean Julie Adams as his wife and the kindly Anne Baxter, the woman he should have married.The film does go a little over-the-top with the death scene by Hess's buddy, played to the hilt by Don DeFore. When Hudson tells a dying DeFore that death is where one door opens after another closes is a little too much to take; although, it's effectively done.Married to Martha Hyer in the film, Hudson soon learns that she is with child when he goes off to Korea. There, he meets Anna Kashfi, a young woman who has fled the ravages of war in her town. Due to his religious upbringing, romance does not evolve around the characters. In fact, she dies tragically near the end of the film.The remaining part of the film deals with the attempts of Yang (Kashfi) and Hess to get the children out of a warring province to safe haven somewhere else. I thought we were going to see another "Inn of the 6th Happiness" here but we did not.This is definitely a film of the triumph of the human spirit. It's another solid film for veteran director Douglas Sirk. He made so many of those women's pictures in the 1950 that starred Rock Hudson.