The movie is astonishigly simplistic. George Peppard shows up in his regiment and it's soon apparent that he's totally obsessed with downing enemy planes, the outcome of the war be damned. The reason for his obsession? Apparently some inter-class tension with German aristocracy, but this is so utterly undeveloped that you're left guessing.
Anyway, George gets to kill a lot of enemies, and in the meantime one of his comrades dies in stupid game of "let's see who does the riskiest aerial stunt". Our hero also meets his idol, the Red Baron, and sleeps with Ursula Andress, who is the wife of a big shot General (played by James Mason), but he doesn't seem to enjoy it all that much. The General totally knows George is boinking his wife, but he doesn't care, because he wants to make a hero pilot oh him, so whatever. In the end, a field Marshall hears about an ugly thing George did and, wishing to avoid the scandal, General Mason makes the hapless pilot test a "death trap" test plane, bringing an explosive end to George's distinguished career. Because that's totally what Generals do (specially if they're German!!), kill their best men at the most desperate time of war, even though he could have solved the whole problem with a private talk with the Marshall. Not that we really care, since George's character was kind of a bastard.
In all seriousness, everybody's talent is wasted here, as well as the presumaby sizeable budget. The dialogue is incredibly silly and obvious for the most part, and not even the aerial scenes are particularly impressive. The depiction of WWI is also really tame and generic. I actually watched the movie because of Douglas Slocombe being the cinematographer, but it's probably one of his most unremarkable works. All in all, two and a half mostly unnecessary hours that at least serve to prove that vapid, overblown movies aren't only something of present times.
Anyway, George gets to kill a lot of enemies, and in the meantime one of his comrades dies in stupid game of "let's see who does the riskiest aerial stunt". Our hero also meets his idol, the Red Baron, and sleeps with Ursula Andress, who is the wife of a big shot General (played by James Mason), but he doesn't seem to enjoy it all that much. The General totally knows George is boinking his wife, but he doesn't care, because he wants to make a hero pilot oh him, so whatever. In the end, a field Marshall hears about an ugly thing George did and, wishing to avoid the scandal, General Mason makes the hapless pilot test a "death trap" test plane, bringing an explosive end to George's distinguished career. Because that's totally what Generals do (specially if they're German!!), kill their best men at the most desperate time of war, even though he could have solved the whole problem with a private talk with the Marshall. Not that we really care, since George's character was kind of a bastard.
In all seriousness, everybody's talent is wasted here, as well as the presumaby sizeable budget. The dialogue is incredibly silly and obvious for the most part, and not even the aerial scenes are particularly impressive. The depiction of WWI is also really tame and generic. I actually watched the movie because of Douglas Slocombe being the cinematographer, but it's probably one of his most unremarkable works. All in all, two and a half mostly unnecessary hours that at least serve to prove that vapid, overblown movies aren't only something of present times.