Ehirerapp Waste of time

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

sol It's early 1942 and the US Pacific Fleet is on the ropes with most of it's warships sunk and destroyed at Pearl Harbor after the devastating Japanese sneak attack on December 7, 1941. Now with the Japanese moving westward towards the Hawaiian islands and possibly California Washington and Oregon the US Navy under the command of British Admerial, how the hell did he get into the movie?, Cedric Hardwicke plans a strategy to lure the Japanese Pacific Fleet into a trap set for it at Midway Island.With one lone US aircraft carrier zig-zagging all throughout the South Pacific Admerial Hardwrick plans to confuse the Japs into thinking that the US Navy is on the run thus letting its guard down and head for Midway Island thinking that taking the island would would be nothing but a a cake walk. With the overconfident Japs not knowing that the entire US Pacific Fleet is waiting for it and ready to spring a bear, or shark, trap on it! The only problem is that the men of the carrier task force, especially the navy pilots, are to be kept in the dark about the operation making them feel,in avoiding contact with the enemy at all costs, like a bunch of gutless cowards!The flight commander of the carrier task force Cmdr. Bingo Harper,Don Ameche, knows what's going on in his orders to avoid contact with Japanese Navy but has a lot of trouble trying to get his pilots to follow his orders. The Navy fly-boys are itching for a chance to mix it with the Japs but are now almost on the brink of mutiny in them being kept at arms lengths even if their attacked by Jap Zero fighter in being ordered by Harper to turn tail and run. It takes a whole lot of patience and following orders by the head of the carrier flight crew Lt. Cmdr. Edward Moulton, Dana Andrews, to keep both his cool and sanity in having a number of his airmen shot down and killed by the Japanese Air Force without as much as fairing back at them! We also have in the movie Academy Award winning actor and now carrier fighter pilot Hallam "Oscar" Scott, William Eythe, ready to rough it with the Japs more then, what a jerk, being safely back in Hollywood making films with him kissing GI pin-up girls like actresses Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth! This is obviously to show the audience that even Hollywood, the land of make believe, is pulling its weight in the war by having top male stars like Clark Gable & Tyrone Power on he front lines risking their lives fighting Fascism!Finally after sailing around in circles for almost the entire film the carrier task force gave its pilots the order to go into action as the Japanese fleet was within sight of Midway island as the trap was strung on it! Lot of great action, mixed in with a number high emotional, scenes as the US Navy took it to the Japs and put an end to their dreams of conquering the entire Pacific; Up until or even past the US West Coast! As it turned out it was British Admiral, again how the hell did he ever get into the movie?, Hardwicke's brilliant plan to give the Japanese the false feeling on invincibility that lead to their disastrous defeat, losing almost all their combat aircraft carriers, at Midway which turned out to be the turning point in their grand and expansionist plans in the Pacific.

edwagreen A great cast can't help this film and basically here is why:The goal of the navy was to fool the Japanese by thinking that we weren't strong enough to fight back and therefore we would run away from any fight. This is supposed to end when we get enough strength to fight full force at Midway.As a result, this becomes too much of a talky film with everyone basically complaining-where is the navy? How much can you really concentrate on basically doing nothing?Perhaps, if there had been an element of women in the film at the war front, the film might have been better.The always gruff Charles Bickford has little to work with here. Instead, some of his lines go to Don Ameche, but even he can be tolerated up until a certain point. Dana Andrews is missing real grit here. William Eythe, who was so good in 1947's "The House on 92nd Street," also has little to work with.This is a major disappointment.

tedg I'm intrigued by war movies, especially war movies within a country at war. This also happens to be my country, and in fact -- though I will never know the details -- my dad was in this action. This has the required swelling of patriotic fervor at the end, and does so with a minimum of racist demonization.Its about the one really risky time in the war. There was never any doubt that the Germans (and Italians) would lose in Europe once the US entered the war; the only question was the cost. But in the Pacific, the situation was truly dire between Pearl Harbor and this battle. After this battle, it was a war of factories.But before, it was touch and go. Everyone in the States would have known the pivotal role of the event and would have their stories about tactics and bravery. There are three notable things about this movie.The first is that it is nearly all wrong in terms of the history. The reason for this is that the US had broken the code (JN-25). This was not something that could be announced; the US knew the details of the Japanese plans and were able to stage an ambush. But that hardly explains the other, gratuitous historical inaccuracies. One can only think that no one cared what the actual tactics were as long as communal dedication was apparent.A second rather shocking thing is that all the combat footage is genuine. These are real warriors in the real place, with less than half of the movie (obviously overlain) produced as a fiction. Looking at these men and operations deepens the experience, knowing how rare it is to see this before Vietnam.But the most interesting to me is one character. He's pretty much the central character of the fiction: a torpedo plane pilot. Now picture this; you have a real story of national import around which history does swing. You have actual footage which in other, later, contexts with narration stands strong. You have all this and you want to insert Hollywood; what do you do?Well, you insert a character who is a Hollywood actor, someone who has left Hollywood and enlisted but who still carries his Oscar on combat missions! Its yet another example of this phenomenon I call the narrative fold. Pretty cool.Oh, the fictional parts are bad in nearly all respects, excepting one scene. An airman has been killed and his buddy is packing his effects for transport back to his girl. Going through things to place in a suitcase, he finds an empty tube of toothpaste and tosses it in the trash. Then he reconsiders -- a very poignant moment -- and pulls it out of the trash to send to the woman. Its one thing that works. All the rest would wait to be decoded.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

arlenmixes The movie is very interesting, and according to my own researches and familiarities ( since I am presently in my eighth decade ), one of the pleasures for me was NOT to see the time-worn scene of the bullet-riddled F4F "crashing" onto the deck and sliding into the command tower, as is shown in 9 out of 8 movies about WWII Navy pictures. Don Ameche does, if fact, do a very "military" version of the man-in-charge. Me Dear-departed mither into her ninth decade felt that Dana Andrews was the true Hollywoodie-Hero of all times. But what intrigues me MOST about the movie, since we have cruised through the islands of the tropical Pacific ( Figi, Samoa, American Samoa ), is that the film makers felt it necessary for the pilots, when retiring at night aboard ship, to wear PAJAMAS, and sleep under SHEETS and BLANKETS. WE did no such thing !!!