Uninspired melodrama combines with lavish use of stock footage in this cheapie Korean War propaganda flick.
Although the Sabre jet surely qualifies as one of the most beautiful fighters ever built, you have to get more than halfway into this movie before you even see one. You can learn a thing or two about combining stock footage (in this case, beauty shots of F-84 Thunderjets and -- eventually -- the F-86 Sabre) with WWII-era gun camera footage into a slovenly simulation of ground attacks and aerial combat, but that's about the only excuse I can imagine for enduring this gobbler.
I'm not one of those sticklers for absolute accuracy in every detail of a military film, but this one is such a brainless mishmash of piecemeal splicing it's often quite hilarious (if you're an aviation history buff). For instance, in the climactic battle, where they're supposed to be strafing and bombing an airfield full of MIGs, the planes getting chewed to pieces and blown up on the ground are obviously WWII-vintage propellor-driven aircraft, German, Japanese and -- if I'm not mistaken -- some American planes, courtesy of Japanese gun cameras. During the dogfight that develops as the Sabre jets fly escort for the bombers, pay attention and you'll see a P-38 and a LuftWaffe BF-109 go down in flames!
Outside of its revolting message about the proper role of a military wife and its strident Cold War ideology, one truly shameful moment in this film occurs when the hero (Robert Stack) is ordered to blow up an ammunition dump hidden in a house somewhere along a road. So how does he identify this concealed dump? By randomly shooting up houses until he gets the right one! ("Sooner or later, I just gotta hit paydirt...")
Don't waste your time with this threadbare nonsense, when there are far better films -- like "The Bridges At Toko-Ri" or even "The Hunters" -- covering the same subject matter.
Although the Sabre jet surely qualifies as one of the most beautiful fighters ever built, you have to get more than halfway into this movie before you even see one. You can learn a thing or two about combining stock footage (in this case, beauty shots of F-84 Thunderjets and -- eventually -- the F-86 Sabre) with WWII-era gun camera footage into a slovenly simulation of ground attacks and aerial combat, but that's about the only excuse I can imagine for enduring this gobbler.
I'm not one of those sticklers for absolute accuracy in every detail of a military film, but this one is such a brainless mishmash of piecemeal splicing it's often quite hilarious (if you're an aviation history buff). For instance, in the climactic battle, where they're supposed to be strafing and bombing an airfield full of MIGs, the planes getting chewed to pieces and blown up on the ground are obviously WWII-vintage propellor-driven aircraft, German, Japanese and -- if I'm not mistaken -- some American planes, courtesy of Japanese gun cameras. During the dogfight that develops as the Sabre jets fly escort for the bombers, pay attention and you'll see a P-38 and a LuftWaffe BF-109 go down in flames!
Outside of its revolting message about the proper role of a military wife and its strident Cold War ideology, one truly shameful moment in this film occurs when the hero (Robert Stack) is ordered to blow up an ammunition dump hidden in a house somewhere along a road. So how does he identify this concealed dump? By randomly shooting up houses until he gets the right one! ("Sooner or later, I just gotta hit paydirt...")
Don't waste your time with this threadbare nonsense, when there are far better films -- like "The Bridges At Toko-Ri" or even "The Hunters" -- covering the same subject matter.