Most Howard Hawks movies seem watchable. IMDB is not a tremendously reliable source for quality, but click on any one of the movies he directed, and you're bound to find something at a 6.0 or above, typically 7.0 or above. So when I went through his list of movies, I also checked to see if I could watch them anywhere. If I could watch it anywhere, I would watch it.
I mention that, because Air Force was available on Dailymotion. Had I been more discerning on what to watch, I probably would have skipped Air Force. Not because it has a poor grade on IMDB - 7.0 - but because of what it is.
Air Force is a propaganda film. There's no two ways around that. Filmed in 1943, and planned shortly after Pearl Harbor, Air Force is pretty explicitly a war propaganda film. One only needs to watch the first and last minutes to figure that out. The beginning is a quote from Abraham Lincoln and the end, well I'll just write it out:
"This story has a conclusion but not an end --- for it's real end will be the victory for which Americans -- on land, on sea, and in the air -- have fought, are fighting now and will continue to fight until peace has won. Grateful acknowledgement is given to the United States Army Air Force, without whose assistance this record could not have been filmed."
The fact that this is a war propaganda film is tolerable for two reasons. First, it is a war propaganda film during World War II. Literally any other war in the 20th century would have put this in a context to make it unbearable. The second is that the action scenes are actually pretty decent, and downright spectacular when you take into account it was made in 1943.
There is however the matter that this was made after Pearl Harbor, or at least because of it, and is set around the events of Pearl Harbor. Which means the enemy of the people in this movie are the Japanese, not the Nazis. Which is REALLY unfortunate when they make a pit stop in Hawaii and... Japanese Americans attack them.
Well I suppose you can remove the American part because it's not said they are American, but it fed on a very real fear at the time that Japanese Americans would do such a thing - it never happened. Which happens to move this movie from any typical war propaganda to anti-Japanese propaganda. Look up what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II if you wonder why this is a problem.
It's a small part of the movie, but it kind of stains the whole thing. In fact, the cinematographer of the picture, James Wong Howe, was Chinese and typically wore "I am Chinese" around so people wouldn't think he was Japanese during World War II. Howe was an innovative, influential cinematographer who worked from the 1920s to the end of his life in the 1970s. He was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, winning two of them. He was nominated for his work on Air Force, and for another movie in 1943.
The plot of Air Force was based on a real thing that happened. B-17s left California and while they were en route, Pearl Harbor happened. That's where real life ends though. The rest of the plot is completely fictional.
One clue about this being a propaganda film is that one of the characters is about to go home because his service is almost over. He wants to go home. He's not very patriotic and is just done with the whole "being a soldier thing." By the end, he wants to re-enlist and is as rah-rah as any soldier.
As with most war movies, this features a cast of unknowns. Couldn't tell you if they were unknown at the time, but I've never seen any of their movies. John Garfield was nominated for an Oscar four years prior, so he was at least a little known. And as with most war movies, the acting isn't really the selling point. It can be, but everyone is functional, not exercising difficult acting chops.
For what it is, Air Force is a good film. It's got good action, good special effects, and has kind of a unique take on a war movie. But some of the patriotic stuff can be a bit much. Made in the smack dab middle of World War II with a Hollywood Production Code that would accept nothing less than full-throated patriotism, Air Force is a product of it's time, for better or worse.
2.5/4 stars
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