TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

jacobs-greenwood Directed by Delbert Mann, with a story by producer Sy Bartlett that was adapted by Robert Pirosh, the film received an Academy Award nomination for its Sound Effects - lots of hardware on display including the requisite takeoffs and a dangerous landing."It's lonely at the top" is the movie cliché that's recycled in this drama; in fact, its story is so much like Strategic Air Command (1955) with James Stewart and June Allyson, and even other earlier wartime dramas like The Dawn Patrol (1938), Command Decision (1948) and Bartlett's own Twelve O'Clock High (1949), that one might be tempted to write this one off (which would be a mistake).Like those other military leadership stories, it works, due (in no small part) to its lead actor's performance. In this one, Rock Hudson plays Colonel Jim Caldwell, who's just been assigned the Wing Commander of a SAC base that's just failed a surprise operational review. Dubbed an ORI, it's an extensive simulated test of base readiness. A failure to respond to such an alert with maximum efficiency could mean disaster for the United States, hence (according to the film) there were 51 bases complete with B-52 bombers, Titan missiles, and appropriate staff established and trained to meet any threat.The plot's first ninety minutes establishes the difficulty Caldwell has in setting new, even higher standards of performance for those under his command. These lead to clashes and conflicts with (or firings of) virtually everyone else including the likable vice commander - his former Korean War veteran friend Colonel Hollis Farr (Rod Taylor), an aging base commander that drinks to better handle the stress - Colonel Bill Fowler (Barry Sullivan), the hands-on maintenance officer who doesn't delegate responsibility very well - Colonel Joe Garcia (Henry Silva), and his British wife Victoria (Mary Peach), who receives comfort from Fowler's spouse Evelyn (Leora Dana). Caldwell does manage to befriend a handball-playing maintenance Sergeant Banning (Robert Lansing, who looks remarkably like Steve McQueen); otherwise it's tough sledding for the hard- nosed first time commander. Others in the cast include Richard Anderson and Leif Erickson; future Best Actress Oscar winner Louise Fletcher appears (uncredited, in a hospital no less) as a crewman's wife near the end of the movie.The story's final 30 minutes, which begins with Caldwell inspiring an attempted suicide wounded now former Colonel Fowler, is intended to demonstrate the results of the commander's efforts. Once surprise inspector General 'Happy Jack' Kirby (Kevin McCarthy) arrives to conduct a follow-up ORI, everyone pulls together to pass the test with flying colors.

dcjimd This is a study in the problems of military command, about how to reconcile the difficulties of a leader trying to decide whether to be a buddy to his men or a tough and hated son of a bitch who just wants to get the job done, no matter what the personal cost. In this case, Rock Hudson plays the commander of a Strategic Air Command B-52 bomber wing and missile base in Northern California.As a command study, it was all done far better in films like "Twelve O'Clock High" and "Command Decision" although some of the aerial footage is impressive. The one reason I watched this film is that it contains a song called "The SAC Song" written by musical satirist Tom Lehrer (known for song parodies such as "National Brotherhood Week" and "The Vatican Rag" a number of which were sung on the 1960s TV show "That Was the Week That Was." ) The song is very short (it is sung in about a minute) but it is typical Lehrer and, probably for legal reasons, does not appear in the recent complete CD collection of his works "The Remains of Tom Lehrer.) I am going to try to put it in this listing as a quote.

buckboard I'm more than a little amused by the current-day huffiness about smoking and other 21st century mores superimposed on a flick made more than 40 years ago. The movie is well-made, well-acted, and authentic--although the script is a little hackneyed. But that's mostly because it's a remake, not just of "Twelve O'Clock High" as pointed out elsewhere in comments, but also of "Above and Beyond" (the scenes between Hudson and Peach virtually mirror those between Robert Taylor and Eleanor Parker), screen-written by Sy Bartlett's collaborator on TOH, Beirne Lay Jr.Where it fell flat was that it attempted to counter two books that soon after (as a result of Hollywood reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis) became doomsday movies--"Fail-Safe" (the premise of which was then and eventually was proved by time to be totally false), and one of my personal favorites, "Dr. Strangelove etc". AGOE got caught in the anti-militaristic paradigm shift started by the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Kennedy Assassination, and ended by the Vietnam War.I was a dependent on an Air Force base when I first saw this movie at the base theater (and at a SAC base when I saw Strangelove), and my friends and I thought the flick was a riot--the depiction of base housing in this and "X-15" were unlike anything we ever lived in!!!! (Jimmy Stewart's first set of quarters in "Strategic Air Command" was closer to the mark.)It's a good flick--not great, but interesting and representative of its time.

Jim Atkins This film has a hackneyed plot about the strains put on a marriage by nuclear weapons, but some of the scenes are little short of spectacular. The sequence where Hudson and Taylor are timing a mass takeoff of bombers and discussing the job performance of the base commander is truly awe-inspiring. The wind from the engine blast whips at their clothes and the noise is ear-shattering. Most of the film seems like it was written by complete hacks but there is a story buried under all the maudlin touches.