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At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

If you like old movies, this one is pretty entertaining, it has an interesting plot, that is suspenseful enough to keep you watching. Ralph Bellamy is as good in this as in any of his other movies. Also pretty funny because of it's age, lot's of smoking which is always a gas these days! In full disclosure, my great aunt Grace was one of the writers, but I've given it 8 stars, and it is worth the watch.

"Air Hawks" is a B-movie from Columbia Pictures. Yet, despite its very low budget and modest cast, it is entertaining--in a breezy and light way. In other words, as long as you aren't expecting magic, you'll probably be reasonably pleased with this one.Ralph Bellamy stars as Barry Eldon--the head of a tiny air service. Yet, surprisingly, a much larger air transport company is afraid of the competition and try to buy him out. But, despite their very generous offer, Barry rejects it and has no intention of selling. Now here is were it gets very weird--his competitors find a goody mad scientist and pay him to create a death ray in order to knock Barry's planes out of the sky!! I saw a similar plot in several other low-budget films--perhaps influenced by Tesla's odd experiments with death rays and electricity.Overall, this is a nice little adventure film--and makes a decent time-passer. However, it is also worth seeing for one odd reason--late in the film, Wiley Post plays himself! And, only three months later, this famous aviator would die in the same crash that killed Will Rogers. Fascinating coincidence, huh?

There is no doubt that "Air Hawks" moves at a rather quick pace, and I suppose it could be classified as a "B" movie by the standards of its day, but the rather formulaic pioneering-aviator plot is enlivened considerably. That's done by the engagement -- by the bad hombres in the competition to Ralph Bellamy's ITL transport company -- of a German accented scientist who has developed an invisible ray to set aircraft engines on fire. What could have been a really dim-witted "mad scientist" movie was short-circuited -- no pun intended -- by keeping the science-fiction element restrained, and by a focus on the personality of Bellamy's character. He's a "Tom Swift" kind of go-getter, but not a goody-goody, and this hero-type had no small appeal to the audiences of the mid-1930s. Love interest Tala Birell ( Natalie Bierl, also known as Talusha ), is also excellent.Even as the Great Depression was continuing, people in this country continued to hunger for the heroics of air pioneers and other men ( and some women ), who seemed to stand for "can do" as an answer to any question or problem. In that regard, "Air Hawks" gains a large measure of Q or "likability", both for Bellamy and for his erstwhile ally in the newspaper business. In many ways this is more of "a yarn" than a really deep motion picture story, but that's OK, and it works well even now. Seventy-three years have passed since this film was released but the concept wrapped into this movie, that of there being a secret weapon which can bring down an aircraft from a distance without using a rocket or a missile, and without leaving any traces of its use, is an important and intriguing notion. One only has to look back at the destruction of TWA 800, and the controversy surrounding it, or the crash of Swissair 111, to know that the secret weapon concept is not something purely out of the realm of Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers.Fast-paced, well-edited, and with lively performances by all concerned, this "Air Hawks" action / adventure production gets a vote of eight and would have notched a nine if Wiley Post had been given a little something more to do than to say "hello".

'Air Hawks' is a rousing good adventure story, starring Ralph Bellamy in one of his rare outings as a two-fisted action hero. (Bellamy was more typically cast in romantic comedies, as the guy who lost the girl to a better man.) Here, he plays a former Army pilot who sets up his own low-budget air-courier service. Bellamy hopes to get a lucrative federal contract, flying bags of mail cross-country. A previous air service lost the contract because their 'planes kept mysteriously crashing.Veteran movie villain Douglass Dumbrille is in this movie, cast as a 'respectable businessman', so it's obvious who's behind the air crashes ... and that's not a spoiler. The action cuts back and forth between Bellamy's good-guy flyboys and Dumbrille's secret hideout, so the audience know the reason for those 'plane crashes well ahead of Bellamy. Hoping to get the mail contract for himself, Dumbrille has engaged the services of an eccentric professor named Schulter ... who has invented an 'electrical ray': a gigantic unwieldy device that he points into the air, which conveniently bollixes any electrical motor that passes overhead. I would have thought that most 1930s aircraft were powered primarily by internal combustion, with electricity being only secondary. But Schulter's gizmo works a treat, and pretty soon the pretty aeroplanes are dropping like stones. Professor Schulter (a very brief role) is played by Edward Van Sloan, who famously played the ethically-responsible scientist in several monster movies, so it's very interesting to see him here as a scientist who uses his knowledge for evil purposes. The presence of Schulter's electrical ray makes 'Air Hawks' technically a science-fiction movie, but the whole film has the feel of a Saturday-morning adventure serial, with the emphasis on thrills rather than gadgetry.The most interesting name in this cast list is that of Wiley Post, who is now remembered only as the pilot in the fatal 'plane crash that killed Will Rogers. (Matters were not helped by the Broadway musical 'The Will Rogers Follies', which reduced Wiley Post's entire life to a cheap plot device.) It's unfortunate that Post is so poorly remembered. In the 1930s, most Americans knew of Post for his record-setting exploits as a pioneer of high-altitude flight. He invented a pressure suit designed to keep an aviator alive at high altitudes. Post was also the first pilot to fly around the Earth, and the first person to experience jet lag.Many 1930s films (especially those made at Warner Bros) featured a useful cinematic device, in which brief clips of the principal actors are shown during the opening credits, with the actors' names (and the names of their roles in the film) superimposed on these images. This very helpful practice enabled filmgoers to match an actor's name to a face. That device is used in the opening credits of 'Air Hawks', with Wiley Post prominently listed as playing himself. After that brief clip, however, we see no more of the great aviator until more than halfway through this film, when Wiley Post ambles onto the screen very briefly to offer a few words of encouragement to Bellamy's beleaguered pilot. It's clear that the filmmakers worship Post, and rightly so. Except for newsreel footage, 'Air Hawks' is Wiley Post's only film appearance, so it's regrettable that his participation is so brief. (Maybe he had to catch a flight.) I also enjoyed a brief appearance by Elise Cavanna, the tall and gawky (yet attractive) comic actress who performed so memorably in a couple of WC Fields movies at this time.'Air Hawks' is a delight from start to finish, one of those movies that nostalgia enthusiasts talk about when they say that Hollywood "doesn't make 'em like that any more". I'll rate this movie 10 out of 10.