Excellent adaptation.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Can't understand how I missed this picture for so long, but I finally caught up to it after all these years. I thought it was great, one of the best war pictures ever, on a par with "A Walk In The Sun". As everyone has attested, it charts the progress of a B-17 across the Pacific after taking off from San Francisco on Dec. 6, 1941. They were headed for Hickam Field in Honolulu - we know what happens next.The sleepless crew refuels and moves on to Wake Island and eventually to the Philippines, where it engages in some the best aerial fighting footage in movies, patched up and held together by gum and rubber bands. On the way, we get to know the crew members and their backgrounds. The crew are mostly neophyte actors (this is 1943) John Garfield, Arthur Kennedy, Gig Young and James Brown, but the cast and the story are pulled together by old veteran Harry Carey as the Crew Chief.There are lots of cliché scenes and some of the material has been recycled in other war pictures, but "Air Force" did it first and did it under the skilled direction of Howard Hawks. There is a lot to like in 'Air Force" and I can't think of a single criticism - well done all around and I loved it.

"Air Force" is a 1943 propaganda film notable for being directed by Howard Hawks. It revolves around the crew members of a B-17 Flying Fortress, Hawks watching as the group fly training missions, are stationed at Pearl Habour during the infamous Japanese raid, and are pushed to the limit as they fly a seemingly incessant string of bombing runs in and around the Philippines. The film features dialogue by the great William Faulkner. Hawks loved to mingle with novelists, and was even close to Hemingway. They collaborated on "To Have or Have Not", one of Hawks' more underrated pictures."Air Force's" final act is a shameless bit of war-baiting, containing scenes (more graphic than usual if you're familiar with early, WW2 era, American propaganda films) in which Japanese fighter pilots shoot defenceless American parachutists, American pilots revenge-kill Japanese men and audiences are invited to revel in the slaughter of Japanese sailors. As Hawks is such a skilled director, the film's blood-lust, xenophobia and violence are more fine tune and amplified than is typical of 1940s propaganda films. The film ends (prophetically) with an allusion to the atomic bombing of Japan (which would take place 2 years later) and a patriotic speech by President Roosevelt. As expected, the film's Japanese are portrayed as being totally vicious and stupid maniacs, whilst US forces are innocent victims. In reality, the US strung Japan along as much as Japan did the US. "Let me baby Japan along for another three months," Roosevelt once joked with Churchill, as he fished for a pretext to enter the war proper. While the US and China were "allies" during WW2 – and hence Roosevelt's funding of China, placing embargoes on Japan and baiting a murderous Imperial Japan into expanding into Southern Asia - the US and China would be at war less than 15 years later during the Korean conflict."Air Force", along with such aviation films as "633 Squadron" and "The Dam Busters", would prove a huge influence on George Lucas' "Star Wars: A New Hope", which shot-for-shot borrows whole sequences from these films, particularly the latter two.Hawks is known for his rapid-fire aesthetic, and "Air Force" is no different. "Air Force" moves like a bullet train, the action ceaseless, tight and engrossing. There are also shades of Hawks' "Scarface" and "The Big Sleep" here, with shadowy cinematography, hard boiled banter, attractive machismo, tightly inter-related characters, tight editing and dark bomber cockpits which at times resemble noir sound-stages. As with most of Hawks' pictures, a tough, stoic, competitive and authoritarian vibe is prevalent. His is a "male" cinema — male values, male heroes, male activities, and male resolutions – which believes in and glorifies such traditionally masculine pursuits as world war, trailblazing, killing Native Americans, cattle driving, gun fighting, air-plane piloting, hunting and auto racing. Like Hemingway, your typical Hawks picture also has a certain cadence or tempo, very clipped, minimalist and blunt, traits which help them hold up centuries later. When discussing film-makers of his era, Hawks is often overlooked, but he could be just as, and even more, stylish than Ford and Hitchcock.7.9/10 – Like Hawks' "Sergeant York", great technique is marred by war baiting and simplistic propaganda. The film was praised and sponsored by the United States War Office. Worth one viewing.

Hawks makes some pretty rousing war propaganda. I loved the start of this film, with a bomber traversing the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii on December 6th, 1941. They arrive the next morning and lose radio contact in the middle of a transmission. When they get back in contact with someone, they find out about the Pearl Harbor raid. After they land and are sent toward the Philippines, the film becomes a pretty rote, gung-ho piece. The most recognizable star in the cast is John Garfield, who plays a man who failed to become a pilot and plans on quitting the Air Force ASAP - that is, until he finds out about the attack. Then he's eager to pick up a machine gun and mow down some rice-eating mofos! Despite the film's lack of narrative ambition, Hawks' direction is often fantastic. As with most every war film of the period, there's a lot of stock footage of the battles. Hawks does a great job to make it as invisible as possible - you can tell most of the time, but it's as good as I've ever seen it.

Air Force (1943)There are many reasons this is an important film, but there are a couple reasons why this isn't an especially watchable one.First, it's in the middle of the war, the big one, two years after Pearl Harbor and two years before Hiroshima. You can't expect anything but a slightly (or not so slightly) propaganda leaning movie. The fleet of flying fortresses (B-17 bombers) that make the basis for the movie are impressive machines, and the men are shown to be both competent and likable, good American boys and men. Director Howard Hawks had just finished "His Girl Friday" and "Ball of Fire," both comic masterpieces, and he was about to film "To Have and Have Not" with his buddy Humphrey Bogart. "Air Force" is not just a film between great films, it's made to the same high standards.You'll see some astonishing photography here, by James Wong Howe (who made some other war films along with a dozen masterpieces among his 136 features over a lifetime). Part of the filming is on the ground, with great light and shadow and framing, and part are airborne battle scenes, including shooting enemy planes in midair, very dramatically. And the editing, which won an Oscar, is conspicuously excellent. Not only are the normal continuity edits from scene to scene and shot to shot sharp and perfect, there are also many times (during battle scenes) where the editing turns to fast cuts, or montage, that is really first rate. It would seem avant-garde in a less militaristic world.What else to like? Well, the plot in its overview is fair enough, beginning with a chilling realization as the planes leave San Francisco that while flying to Hawaii the Japanese have attacked and they have nowhere to land. The emergency begins immediately. The actors, a few famous ones like John Garfield thrown in, are in good form, and the sense of group effort with the occasional disgruntled outsider is firmed up well.But, in the end, the movie almost unwatchable if you care at all about realism. I don't mean accuracy, but believability. The men are endlessly cheerful in an offhand way even as they are about to die, or the world is crumbling around them. They gather to talk or chitchat and the camera has them fit the frame with almost a parody of posing. This isn't war, this is a movie, it seems to shout. Well, fine, it's a movie, and so you never quite buy into it. The events are sometimes implausible, as well, and of course, things work out well over all. Too well.I have to say loudly that I understand why the movie was made this way. There was no room in 1943 in people's hearts or consciences for doubting and cynicism as people were being drafted, wounded, killed, and terrorized by actual battle, including battle from the air. But that doesn't mean it makes for relevant watching now. It's interesting, it's well made, it's important as part of how Americans saw the war through Hollywood's eyes, but it's also hard to get what it might have meant to home audiences back then.