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Admirable film.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Directed by Richard Wallace, with writing credits for Martin Rackin (story) and John Twist (story and screenplay), this World War II propaganda film focuses on the technical role of the title job. It features an all star cast including: Pat O'Brien, Randolph Scott, Anne Shirley, Eddie Albert, Walter Reed, Robert Ryan, Barton MacLane, and Russell Wade, who played a similar role in The Bamboo Blonde (1946).The film begins with a monologue (by Brigadier-General Eugene L. Eubanks himself) emphasizing the importance of the bombardier, and the vision it took to create, train, and staff the job prior to World War II so that we were prepared to join the fight. Major Chick Davis (O'Brien), with his "golden goose" sighting equipment, challenges dive bomber Captain Buck Oliver (Scott) to see whose method will be most effective in the conflict, should the United States choose to enter the war. Though Buck misses the target, Chick hits it from 20,000 feet, convincing his critics to fund a training school (actually in Kirtland Field, Albuquerque) in New Mexico.The mythical site is reported to be an airfield owned by a former, and now deceased, dive bomber named Hughes, whose daughter Burton (Shirley) and son Tom (Albert) still work there. Gruff Chick arrives to find an environment too cozy for the Army Air Force, because of Burton's woman's touch, and has Sgt. Dixon (MacLane) rough it up a bit. Buck arrives to help, as one of the pilots for the bombardiers, and is greeted by Burton, who he evidently has been dating. Apparently Tom has enlisted as a bombardier too, based on the fact that his best friend, a star football player, Jim Carter (Reed) had joined.The film then spends quite a bit of time giving an overview of the education, which begins with extensive classroom and other ground training before the students are ever taken up in a plane. Besides Tom and Carter, some of the other recruits include Joe Connors (Ryan), Chito Rafferty (Richard Martin), and Paul Harris (Wade). Some of the pupils do better than others: Connors is distracted until we learn the reason - someone had been offering him money for one of the "golden goose" sighting apparatuses. Chick uses Connors to catch the culprits. Chick must also fight for his men to be treated with respect in the Army, e.g. to get commissions making them equal to their pilots. Scott's character Buck serves the function of the skeptical pilot trying to "steal" the best of Chick's recruits and as one who must be convinced of the bombardier's value.Shirley's character, as the lone credited female in the film, is not only a romantic interest for the competing Buck and Carter (and even to the smallest degree, Chick) but also serves to "soften up" the tough Chick a bit, acting as his sounding board, loyal employee, and voice of reason. Joan Barclay does appear, uncredited, as a romantic interest for Rafferty, however briefly. The most dramatic, and character revealing moments in the film, revolve around Arnold's character, who must justify why Chick and the Army board should keep him given his fear of jumping out of a disabled plane AND later is doomed to a tragic fate.The final phase of the film is the realization of all the extensive training, after it is learned that the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor.Though this film received an Academy Award nomination for Special Effects, they are vastly inferior to those in another film nominated film that same year, Air Force (1943).There is, of course, a moment late in the film when Buck sees the light and appreciates the role of the titled soldier. The film ends, oddly enough for the time, with its credits.

***SPOILERS*** Off we go into the wild blue yonder here with the boys in blue members of the USAAF doing their thing in saving the American people as well as the free world from the forces of fascism all over the world trying to take away their freedom and democracies. This time by training and later blasting the enemy-Japanese-to kingdom come with their loads of bombs from their B-25 bombers flying into the teeth of massive Jap anti aircraft fire. We also have the women that they left behind at the airbase or home rooting them on but because of restrictions against women in combat, which have since been lifted, back then in 1943 unable to join them on their combat missions against the Japanese Empire.There's also a bit of a conflict between fly boys Major Chick Davis, Pat O'Brian, and his good friend Captain Buck Oliver, Randolph Scott, not just how to drop the bombs at either low or high altitude but over the girl Burton "Burt" Hughes, Anne Shirley,who because of her late hero in WWI father is in charge of the airfield-Hughes Field-as well as of her two suitors. We also have a number of side stories here with the afraid of bailing out of a falling plane Tom Hughes, Eddie Albert, Burton's brother later saving a fellow airman hanging on to the planes cargo door and them falling to his death 12,000 feet below without a parachute!***SPOILERS*** The big scene in the movie after almost 3/4 of it having nothing to do whet we, the audience, came to see we finally get to see the boys in action bombing-as Donald Trump likes to say-the sh*t out of the Japs by blasting the Japanese city of Urgoya as as Captain now Major Buck Oliver is captured by the hated and sadistic Japs and threatened with death or ever worse if he doesn't talk! What they want him to talk about is never fully explained by them because he checks out on a hijacked gasoline laden truck before they can get anything out of him. Setting fires all over the city's industrial district Buck makes it possible for his friend Major Chick Davis and his crewmen to bomb the Japanese war making factories out of existence! P.S Buck never lived to see the end of the movie since he was killed by Chick's planes bombardment but as a final note got to read a letter, that the evil Japs stole from him, from the girl Burton that he and Chick were both fighting over that it was him that she really was in love with!

I wasn't sure at first if I was watching a documentary, propaganda film or dramatic presentation. I guess given the time of production it was a mix of all three.Admittedly the dramatic plot was somewhat predictable. But you had a sense that there would be some interesting scenes as the movie went on. We were able to witness what appeared to be realistic training regimens and equipment.Where this movie came together for me was closer to the end. The scenes had a realism (at least as I perceived it) that I haven't encountered often before. You could place yourself in the action and imagine the thoughts of the young combatants. This was mixed in with the usual problems of portraying passable Japanese soldiers at a time when you might think real Japanese actors would be somewhat scarce.The movie is excellent as a source of the state of the American mindset in 1943 as the war waged with Japan. Also of interest was a dig at the Japanese with respect to the help the USA gave Japan in past years.

Flag-waver about the training and tsuris of bombardiers during World War II. It's kind of interesting to hear about the motives of these cadets and informative to learn about their training program. The uniforms are nice, and sometimes Randy Scott as the only pilot involved in the program wears a dashing white scarf under his leather flight jacket. The aerial scenes are actually pretty well done, considering what the budget must have been. There's very little air combat but the effects are effective. During a night raid by B-17s on Nagoya (which never happened) the bombers are attacked by Japanese fighters and someone went to the trouble of showing us that the line of tracer bullets lags behind the traverse of the gun firing them. It's like spraying a garden hose rapidly from side to side. Considering that the target is moving in three dimensions it's a wonder that any of them are hit.Let's see. I think that's about it for the best parts. The movie seems a slapdash affair with some miscasting and a weak script.Pat O'Brian is not a hard-nosed disciplinarian of a commanding officer. Pat O'Brian is Father Duffy. The actor who plays "Chico Rafferty" can't do a believable Hispanic accent. Abner Biberman is a Japanese sergeant who simply cannot do a Japanese accent. "Sooo -- you sink you vill not speak? You are long about zat." There's a lot of unengaging friendly competition for the affection of one young woman who happens to work as O'Brian's secretary. It's made manifest at the beginning of the film that most of the office staff will be women because "they're more efficient at it than men." But everybody's after this one babe. (Maybe because she's the daughter of the millionaire pioneer airman who built the field.) O'Brian even proposes gruffly to her. I half expected her to say "you're married to the Air Force." A terrible song is pounded into our ears -- "Rah, Rah, Rah, for the BOMBARDIERS!" (I couldn't help being reminded of Mel Brooks' parody, "Jews in Space.") One of the trainees is doing poorly because, although he's bright and capable, he seems timid. Before the board, he explains that he keeps thinking of the people who will be under his bombs. His mother had called him a "murderer". The general patiently explains that, well, son, don't think of them as people. Think of them as the enemy's arsenal. Don't believe everything your mother tells you. And pray to God for the courage to bomb the crap out of those monkeys. Something very much like that, no kidding.One of the more exhilarating moments is near the end. Scott's lead bomber has been shot down. He and (a miscast) Barton MacLane as the comic relief sergeant are captured. Scott escapes and drives a flaming truck into the middle of an ammunition dump to provide a fire that will guide the B-17s. He leans out of the window, grins up at the sky, and shakes his fist, shouting, "Come AWN, you BOMBARDIERS!" (They come.) The film was thrown together, I guess, and the script left deliberately at a level that school kids would understand. I don't mean to loose an entire salvo on the film. I've watched it two or three times now and find much of it enjoyable, particularly the scenes of action aloft and training below. But I can't get through it without wincing now and then when it turns into a berserk kind of "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" piece of lowbrow propaganda. It isn't the propaganda that I mind, so much as the fact that it's pretty brutally presented. "Triumph of the Will" is propaganda too -- and propaganda in an evil cause -- yet it's a far superior film. For effective propaganda from our side, delicately blending training, romance, and action, see "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo." Still, as I say, the kids may enjoy "Bombardier" from beginning to end.