Sadly Over-hyped

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

It's 1918 and the war is being waged on the battlefields of France -- and over those battlefields too. Richard Dix wants no part of it. However, his girl friend, the cute and saucy Elizabeth Allen, shames him into enlisting, and he becomes a fighter pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corpe and is sent overseas, where he is soon joined by Allen as a nurse. In his first combat mission, he flies as part of the squadron, manages to get on the six o'clock position of a "Heinie" but can't bring himself to pull the trigger on his machine guns. His superior officer, Ralph Bellamy, chews him out.On a later flight, after watching a friend being shot down, he become animated and scores his first "kill." And, actually, he feels pretty good about when he thinks it over. He shoots down numerous other Heinies and his score creeps up until it's about 40. (Historically, Eddie Rickenbacker was the highest scoring American ace with 26 aerial victories.) By now, Dix has begun to enjoy his job and has a sneaky tactic whereby he leaves the squadron and pulls up into a position that puts his airplane between the enemy and the sun, thus blinding the Heinies to his attack. In World War II, we accused the Japanese of being sneaky for doing the same thing. (You can ignore that gloss if you want.) Meanwhile, his commanding officer, Ralph Bellamy, is getting furious. In not playing with the team, Dix has lessened its strength by one airplane, and all for his own self aggrandizement. "You'll do as you're told -- and that's an order!", or words to the same effect. But does Dix do it? Are you kidding? He's not about to submerge his identity, his prowess, into that of his squadron.And he's still up there, lingering around in the vicinity of the sun, when a Heinie plane flies over the base and drops a message about a squadron member who had been shot down and captured, reassuring the boys that the prisoner is alive and doing well Then Dix dives out of the sun and wrecks the German airplane with aplomb.The Heinie had no chance to defend himself but somehow Dix's scalp has been grazed and he winds up in the hospital. His bed is next to that of a very young pilot who constantly moans in pain and begs for water. Dix tells him to shut up but learns from a nurse that the patient can't drink anything because he's been shot through the stomach and is dying. While listening to the wounded boy Dix is stunned to learn that this is the Heinie pilot he'd just shot down, only a cadet with few hours flying time. Chagrin time for Dix. He accepts Bellamy's offer of an instructor's job back in the states but when taunted by some of his squadron mates, he decides to regress and go back to killing.The only problem is that once in the air, again at a Heinie's six, he can't bring himself to pull the trigger. He and his cute and saucy girl friend are finally together, hugging each other decorously among the wildflowers and dreaming of a home and four children.It's an anti-war movie from 1933, with World War I safely behind the audience. Nobody's performance stands out especially, nor does anyone's performance torpedo the movie. There is some genuine flight footage and a lot of model work. There's little ambiguity about a defeat. Just about everyone who is downed does a nose dive into the earth but -- this being 1933 -- there are not yet bouquets of exploding fireballs with each mishap.The moral evolution of Dix's character is kind of interesting and I rather enjoyed it for all its primitive techniques. I liked it too because it SHOWS us how to dislike war without a single sermon being preached. Not that I mind the pep talks that show up so often in movies about war but they're usually so unoriginal, so filled with clichés. It's not often we hear anything like "when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger."

Potential SPOILER.OK, so it's not a great movie. For it's time, it was probably considered pretty damn good but some movies, and this is just my humble opinion, just don't hold up over time. Albert Fin....sorry, Richard Dix was a pretty OK actor, as one other reviewer put it, a bit hammy, but over all, for the 30s, not bad but I have to admit, his maniacal killer stuff was the stuff that modern film considers parody. His obsession with the kill (a guy who was very much a pacifist) was maybe a tad overdone. However, from a psychological standpoint, what a very interesting character study. I'd LOVE to see this movie remade with a more gradual change in the character instead of almost immediately, though you can see how getting MAD can change a person's outlook.I'm not sure if that was really a spoiler, but I'll click the box to be on the safe side.Mr. Finney...DAMMNIT, Mr. Dix plays crazy well, I'll give him that, campy, hammy, but well and as I said, almost funny. I fully enjoyed him. I find it sad that almost every war movie made up until the 1960s seemed to find a need for a love story. Blech! This one had one and maybe it was needed to help show his transformation, but, ah, whatever. I enjoyed it and would never tell anyone not to see it. 'Nuff said.

A mild-mannered sculptor who hates war becomes the ACE OF ACES in World War One.Although nearly forgotten for decades, this powerful little anti-war film packs a punch as it focuses on the young men of an American flying squadron stationed in France. Cynical & flippant, they know the odds are against them surviving the war and they each deal with that knowledge in their own way.Richard Dix, an excellent actor who has become undeservedly obscure, gives a powerful performance as a pilot embittered by war's savagery yet delighting in his ability to kill. His reaction at finally meeting one of the Germans he has mortally wounded is only one moment which gives the actor much scope to display his craft. Lovely Elizabeth Allan portrays the weary front-line nurse, once Dix's fiancée, who brings some humanity back into his life.Ralph Bellamy plays Dix's no-nonsense superior officer; Theodore Newton does well as Dix's barracks mate. Movie mavens will recognize an uncredited Grady Sutton as an excited house guest.RKO has given the film fine production values, with the flying sequences especially well mounted. The movie is marred slightly by the ending, which is rather unbelievable considering the moments leading up to it. And whatever happened to the chimp & the lion?

First, you have to buy Richard Dix as an upper-crust sculptor and pacifist named "Rocky." Then you have to accept that after one dogfight he turns into a cold-blooded killing machine. There's no middle road with this guy! The aerial combat scenes are well done with an excellent use of miniatures, but they aren't in the same league as the ones in "Wings," "Hell's Angels" or "The Dawn Patrol." The squadron banter has a realistic feel to it unlike any of the other dialogue in the film. There's a particularly bad scene where the heroine is a warfront nurse and the wounded Private Exposition is brought in to fill her in on the story so far. Dix's rapid changes in personality are given no real reason and make hash of his character and anything profound the film is trying to say. Obviously modeled after "Journey's End" and all the other anti-war plays of the time, "Ace Of Aces" ends up making a travesty of both pacifism and soldiering.