Sterling Hayden, a very good and underrated actor, plays a grouchy captain whose one and only goal is to keep his rescue helicopters flying. However, he has a hot-shot new pilot (Arthur Franz) who has ideas of taking wild risks and it puts him in the hot seat with Hayden. Through the course of the movie, time and again, Hayden's slow and steady mentality turns out to be the right one and Franz learns to be more of a team player.
Throughout way too much of the movie, the film makers uses TONS of stock footage--too much. It's as if half the film is stock footage. Fortuantely, while a lot of the footage is irrelevant, at least it's high quality and of the correct sorts of planes and equipment. But as a result, the whole thing comes off as cheap and a bit dull. Frankly, I wanted to see more of Hayden's grumpy but entertaining performance---though at times the dialog he and the rest of the cast were given was pretty bad.
I am a huge airplane buff, so I enjoyed seeing the A-26s, B-29s and F-86 but not much more piqued my interest. While there weren't that many Korean War films, you could easily do better with better low budget films like Samuel Fuller's "Steel Helmet" or "Fixed Bayonets". All in all, a boring film due to crap production values.
Throughout way too much of the movie, the film makers uses TONS of stock footage--too much. It's as if half the film is stock footage. Fortuantely, while a lot of the footage is irrelevant, at least it's high quality and of the correct sorts of planes and equipment. But as a result, the whole thing comes off as cheap and a bit dull. Frankly, I wanted to see more of Hayden's grumpy but entertaining performance---though at times the dialog he and the rest of the cast were given was pretty bad.
I am a huge airplane buff, so I enjoyed seeing the A-26s, B-29s and F-86 but not much more piqued my interest. While there weren't that many Korean War films, you could easily do better with better low budget films like Samuel Fuller's "Steel Helmet" or "Fixed Bayonets". All in all, a boring film due to crap production values.