The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

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.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Gary Cooper is an admiral retiring from the US Navy. He solemnly closes his suitcase and turns to leave his ship, an aircraft carrier. The officers are at attention as he walks across the deck. He boards the gig and heads for shore. Then his narrative begins: "It doesn't seem like twenty-seven years ago that I first flew an airplane off the Langley --" And so it goes. The voices of Cooper and one or two other principals carry us through a kind of Classic Comics illustration of the development of naval aviation, from the first fragile and clumsy biplanes wheeling around on the flight deck of the USS Langley in the 1920s to an overflight of jet fighters as Cooper and his wife, Jane Wyatt, stand on the pier, staring proudly up at them as they zoom overhead.A familiar structure. It's like Jimmy Stewart growing up with the organization in "The FBI Story," a promo for J. Edgar Hoover, President-for-Life. And it was used by John Ford in "The Wings of Eagles," although there was more robust humor and a lot of distraction was provided by a drunken wife. The role of wife in "Task Force" is less challenging and of no importance whatever. She's there to tell him how proud she is of his successes, to comfort him when he's sad, and to talk common sense to him when he's so frustrated he's ready to quit the Navy. (Usually it's the other way around, with the wife jealous of her husband's being "married to the Navy.") There's a straw man -- a viciously anti-military editor who rails against expensive investments like aircraft carriers, even after the battle of Midway, when everyone down to the lowliest swabby recognized that the war in the Pacific depended on carriers. The guy should leave his brain to the Smithsonian. Julie London in a small role is yummy, with startling eyes and a nose by Praxitiles.The movie gives us a sense of the passage of time. The footage of the Langley in the 20s morphs into the modern carriers of World War II and the shooting changes from black and white to color. There's a good deal of interspersed combat footage, most of it familiar, beginning with Greg Toland's reenactment of the precipitating event in "Pearl Harbor". Flaming airplanes fall apart in the air. A wounded American aviator has his Hellcat torn in half during a crash landing. A stricken carrier sends up a ball of vermilion fire. The same airplane crashes two times, maybe three, with the negative flipped. If I see that same Japanese fighter trailing fire and smoke and skipping along a few dozen feet above the sea before doing a sudden nose dive, I think I'll scream. Forty millimeter guns pound away. Officers sit and sweat out the battles while the score imitates a clock with a Thump thump Thump thump beat.The battles aren't really described in any detail, and the detail that's provided always makes our side look good, which is to be expected. References are made to Midway, the Phillipine Sea, and Okinawa. (Kamikazes at Okinawa caused more casualties among Navy personnel than were suffered by the Army ashore.) One genuinely brave and self-sacrificing aviator is named among all the fictional character, McCluskey, but he isn't given the right role. Wayne Morris, an actor of little discernible talent, plays another aviator. In real life he'd actually put his rear end on the line playing a Naval aviator during the war. The editing is only a little sloppy. An F4F landing suddenly morphs into a TBF, then back again, but that doesn't happen very often, and the canopy of the hopelessly obsolete TBD Devastator is accurately pictured.The whole movie, from beginning to end, amounts to a promotional ad for Naval aviation. Gary Cooper is the central figure but he's only there to guide us along through the progression of things and events, a kind of patient and explanatory Virgil taking us through a specular gray world that sometimes turns hellish.It isn't a bad movie. I always enjoy movies about aviation and the Navy. But, as far as I could tell, there was only a single original touch in the script. Cooper's ship has been torpedoed and his best friend killed on the bridge below, and when Cooper touches the chest-high steel shield to look down at the body, the metal is so hot that he winces and quickly withdraws his hands. It would have been nice if there had been more such delicate and personal touches.

This film with Gary Cooper, Jane Wyatt (Mrs "Sarek" from Star Trek), and Walter Brennan, is about the history of Naval Air Power: Starting with the country's general stupidity about air power regarding aircraft carriers- And the fight against such stupidity and the eventual win of level heads and an adequate task force in the pacific during WW II.What is unusual about this film is that it begins in Black and White and is filmed as if it were a film made in the 30's - And about halfway through it becomes colourised. This film starts in the early 20's when there were very few carriers and aircraft and pilots to fly them. Cooper's character fights (Along with Brennan who is his immediate superior) to get better Naval Air Power. He is rebuffed by his superiors but never lets up... And eventually, after the incident in June 1942 where 3 Aircraft Carriers took out four Japanese carriers but were sunk or damaged themselves, the Navy was granted a better carrier force.Lots of great war footage is used in this film: They did not use special effects for Aerial battle scenes in moovies like these: It is odd to think that when you see a plane being shot down, a real person got killed in the crash.But the point of such films is not really entertainment: At the start of WW II the US had just about nothing as far as armed forces were concerned. It took decades to get to the point were we had what it took to take on a country with a superior maritime tradition.The real war footage is a stark reminder of things that happened. In recent years, this trend of using real war footage has again cropped up in a few pictures. For example, in "The Chronicles of Riddick," the "fireworks" in a battle are real rockets from Iraq.This film ends with Cooper retiring, and we see jets flying across the sky- So in a way, this film not only is showing us the history of Naval Air power, but also of Hollywood film-making.And that makes "Task Force" a clever and important film.

Task Force gives an excellent account of the earlie years of carrier aviation, right from the 1922 Arms Limitation Conference and the old USS Langly through to the Korean war with the Essex class ships and the jet planes. I especially like that the movie features the real USS Saratoga and USS Enterprise. I think that the movie excellently shows the struggle to gain acknowledgement for carrier aviation, right up to the the attack on Pearl Harbour were the Japanese showed the U.S. how to utilize their carriers. Also the way certain characters has been in-cooperated in the script, the character of Pete Richards bears a striking recemblance to the life of Adm. Marc Mitcher, and also Adm. Yamamotos earlier assignments in Washington D.C. and old Captain Joe Reeves role in carrier aviation are brilliantly portrayed. Finally, Gary Cooper is an excellent choice of actor for the part of Captain Scott, his posture and seriousness makes fore a real officer and gentleman (there should also be something for the ladies !?)

This film depicts the reality of war, better than the turn of the century films, like Pearl Harbor and Saving Private Ryan. The kamikaze attacks what looked like the USS Franklin are very realistic, as were the attacks on JNS Akagi. It also shows realistic views of the USS Missouri in action in the storming of Okinawa. The film just shows Americans in their best light, fighting against the odds, and their own superiors at the same time. Not like Operation Overlord and the Ardennes Offensive, battles more often depicted, which by comparison were cakewalks where the outcome was never in doubt. In this movie, the Japanese are also seen as being a creditable and respected adversaries.Gary Cooper is much more convincing as a WW2 leader than say, Ben Affleck. The leaders at the time were modest men, just doing a job. There was also a lot of technical planning involved in WW2, not just gungho American soldiers and sailors in continuous and unrealistic action. It is also far more dangerous at sea than on land, as you can't go anywhere. The danger element and the general communication between the CVs was bought out well in this movie.This film is a historical recounting of the greatest naval episode of all time.