EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Konterr Brilliant and touching

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

gregormandella Flight Command is a wonderful look into a Navy Fighting Squadron a year before the U.S. entered World War 2. Starring Robert Taylor as Ensign Alan Drake, a fresh graduate of the Navy's Flight School in Pensacola, he's an eager young pilot assigned to a veteran Squadron, Fighting 8, better known as the "Hellcats". Walter Pidgeon is his CO, Lt. Commander Bill Gary and Ruth Hussey plays Pidgeon's wife, Lorna Gary. All three put in a fine performance. The supporting cast does a fine job as well, making it believable that they were a very tight knit group of fliers.The movie had full support of the U.S. Navy and it shows. The attention to detail is excellent, giving the viewer a great inside look into what the pilots did in and out of the cockpit. The aircraft featured is the Grumman F3F-2, the last biplane fighter ever flown by the Navy on their aircraft carriers. It's great to see these pudgy fighters going through their paces. At the time this movie was filmed, Fighting Squadron 8 actually didn't exist. It wouldn't be formed for another year in the fall of 1941.The story line is quite touching at times, especially between the three main characters. Ruth Hussey plays the outwardly tough but inwardly unsettled wife of the squadron commander very well. There isn't a bad portrayal by any of the actors in the film. Hats off to the production team for keeping this film on the level. There's a realism to Flight Command that is very well done. I can imagine that this movie had an effect on recruitment of Navy pilots just like Top Gun did back in the mid 80's.I really couldn't recommend this movie enough, I feel it's that entertaining in so many ways. The story line, the acting and the look back at Naval Aviation at the end of its Golden Era make Flight Command a great choice.

bkoganbing Aviation buffs will love Flight Command. The special effects are outstanding for 1940, very much like Howard Hughes's classic Hell's Angels. If this were made at 20th Century Fox, Tyrone Power would have been cast as the lead. Power had a patent on hero/heel types over at that studio. Robert Taylor who plays the lead here usually played straight up heroes in his films. Taylor played hero/heels, but not as often as Power did. Taylor debuted in that kind of part at MGM with A Yank at Oxford and wouldn't play one again until his classic Johnny Eager.Taylor is a wiseacre fresh naval cadet straight out of the flying school at Pensacola, hence the nickname the others give him. Because of deaths an opening occurs at the elite Hellcats fighter squadron and Taylor is brash enough to think they requested him personally. His attitude doesn't make him too many friends, among them being the squadron leader Walter Pigeon, his wife Ruth Hussey, and her brother Sheppard Strudwick. Strudwick is working on an instrument that will enable planes to land in fog, but gets killed trying to test fly it.That opens all kinds of complications and misunderstandings among the men of the squadron and Taylor gets to feel mighty unwelcome. But he gets a chance to redeem himself in the end.A few days earlier I did a review of another aviation picture Ceiling Zero and commented how Warner Brothers played on the cheap with the special effects. MGM did just the opposite, Flight Command got two Oscar nominations for visual special effects and sound, both well deserved.Carrier based aircraft was still an unproven tactic for war, although aircraft carriers had been developed since the early twenties. But it hadn't yet been shown to be effective in war. It's almost quaint to watch the cast using ancient World War I era biplanes as training vehicles. But that's what the United States Navy had available back then. It was two years until the battle of Midway and less than two years until Pearl Harbor when Flight Command came out. A whole lot of aviation progress was made in that period, it had to be.Flight Command out of necessity has to be dated, but it is still a good film to watch bearing in mind what these men were training for.

Michael O'Keefe Hackneyed war drama about a hot shot naval pilot(Robert Taylor) being assigned to one of the Navy's most prestigious squadrons. He must prove his worth and fit into the elite group at the same time live down the assumption he has had an affair with his Commanding Officer's(Walter Pidgeon)wife(Ruth Hussey). For the time period the special effects are above par. The script seems lacking. Interesting supporting cast includes:Paul Kelly, Nat Pendleton and Red Skelton.

dexter-10 Ens. Alan Drake (Robert Taylor) is a naval air cadet assigned to one of the U.S. Navy's most elite flying squadrons. In the face of personal problems and social conflicts, can he make the grade?