Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Crappy film

Universal pre-coder, directed by John Ford, about the dramatic goings-on at an air mail base. Ralph Bellamy runs the place and has his hands full with arrogant new pilot Pat O'Brien. In future films similar to this, O'Brien would play the Bellamy part of the responsible straight-arrow while James Cagney played the reckless hotshot. So it's interesting to see him playing against his (later) typecasting here. Fine performances from Bellamy and O'Brien. Good support from Gloria Stuart, Slim Summerville, Lilian Bond, David Landau, and Leslie Fenton. Nice special effects and flying sequences. Not quite as good as Night Flight but right up there as one of my favorite aviation films from the '30s.

This is about a band of rugged air mail pilots who risk death to deliver the mail. It seems pretty silly nowadays, but I think people would have accepted the premise in 1931. Ralph Bellamy is excellent playing the heroic John Wayne style hero (Ford made 14 pictures with Wayne). He is a man of extraordinary courage and dedication and few words. Pat O'Brian is quite good as a hot shot, devil-may-care, egotistical flyer. Lacking any real villains, he plays the antagonist in the film. Slim Summerville gives a nice, comical sidekick performance. Besides them, Lilian Bond, as a faithless, bad girl, and Gloria Stuart (Titanic) as a faithful good girl are fun to watch.The flying scenes are not as thrilling as they were in 1931, and it is not a masterpiece, but it is entertaining enough to hold your attention for the 84 minute running time.

Although John Ford was one of the top directors of his time, he apparently didn't always get prime opportunities to helm movies-- particularly earlier in his career. Despite making such prestigious films as "The Iron Horse" and "3 Bad Man" and dozens of other films, here Universal Studios hired him to direct a film which is not much better than a B-movie--passable entertainment and worth seeing but otherwise unremarkable.The film is set in an airport in the desert and Mike (Ralph Bellamy) is in charge of this airmail operation. However, the job is dangerous and they keep losing people. So, when they are down a man he hires an unlikely guy, Duke (Pat O'Brien). He's unlikely because Duke is a top pilot...one of the world's best...and why would he get involved with such a dangerous and thankless operations? Plus, as the film progresses, it becomes obvious that Duke is a total jerk-- only interested in himself and certainly not a team player. So how is Duke going to rise to the occasion and prove himself to be something more? See the film...or not.This film is unusual because the part Pat O'Brien plays is very much unlike his usual nice-guy persona. It's also unusual because the film plays a lot like Howard Hawks' film "Only Angels Have Wings" but isn't nearly as good nor as well acted. Passable and predictable entertainment...the sort of film John Ford could have directed in his sleep.

I have nothing further to add M. Dumonteil's perceptive remarks on "Air Mail", but I just want to say that this film is criminally neglected among Ford's works. I just saw it for the first time in years and I really loved it very much. When I first saw it about 3 years ago, I didn't care for it that much. But now I think it is one of Ford's most stirring and beautiful masterworks. "Air Mail" will inevitably be compared to Hawks' masterful "Only Angels Have Wings" but Hawks' film is closer to the romantic exoticism of Josef von Sternberg, whereas Ford's shows the influence of Murnau. Of course, Ford surpassed this early effort many times in his career but it should not be missed. It should be a fascinating companion to Ford's "The Wings of Eagles", a superb biography of Frank Weade, the scenarist of "Air Mail".