Aside from Gene Tierney (who gets top billing), this film has no big-name stars. Preston Foster plays a nice guy who is an instructor at a military flight school in the Southwest. He's a great pilot and in love with Tierney. One of his students, John Sutton, is an odd case. He is in flight school even though he easily becomes air sick AND he's already a doctor. In real life, I strongly doubt that the military would have trained any doctor to be a pilot--as the really needed doctors and it would have been a shame to waste that training. However, this is a Hollywood film, so you'll need to suspend your sense of disbelief. As for Sutton's motivation, his father was a great WWI pilot who was friends with Foster and Sutton's brother (also a pilot) was just killed. So, to fulfill his family legacy he enters training school. Along the way, Sutton also falls for comely Tierney and this brings problems--Sutton adores Foster and doesn't want to hurt him--but Tierney is a hot tamale and has fallen for Sutton as well.
The main theme, aside from the romance with Tierney, is Sutton's fitness to be a pilot. Despite the family history, he somehow is NOT at home in the air and is a great risk to be washed out of the school. It's only with the help of Foster that he has any chance at all to make it.
This Technicolor film is highly reminiscent of a group of films about pilots in school during the war. Believe it or not, there were quite a few films like this, such as CAPTAINS OF THE AIR and I WANTED WINGS and all are grand entertainment due to excellent flying sequences and good acting. Despite Sutton and Foster no longer being household names, they also did a nice job in the film. While I really enjoyed the movie, I also realize that not everyone loves airplane films like I do. So, while I might like the films enough to give them an 8 or 9, I realize that for the average person out there, the films aren't quite as compelling. Still, it's a solid WWII propaganda film--an excellent movie to bolster the war effort and entertain at the same time. The only problems with the film, and they are minor, are that the plot is a tad formulaic and in a few scenes the plane did some turns and acrobatics no real plane at the time could have done. As I said, minor problems in an otherwise good film.
By the way, for some semi-insane dating advice listen to the guy playing Tierney's Uncle. The scene where he was giving advice to Foster made me smile.
Also by the way, while I said that Foster was mostly forgotten today, he and the Commander (Jack Holt) were pretty big stars back in the silent days. It's interesting here seeing them in roles suited to them in middle age, as they continued acting well past their days as top-billed stars.
The main theme, aside from the romance with Tierney, is Sutton's fitness to be a pilot. Despite the family history, he somehow is NOT at home in the air and is a great risk to be washed out of the school. It's only with the help of Foster that he has any chance at all to make it.
This Technicolor film is highly reminiscent of a group of films about pilots in school during the war. Believe it or not, there were quite a few films like this, such as CAPTAINS OF THE AIR and I WANTED WINGS and all are grand entertainment due to excellent flying sequences and good acting. Despite Sutton and Foster no longer being household names, they also did a nice job in the film. While I really enjoyed the movie, I also realize that not everyone loves airplane films like I do. So, while I might like the films enough to give them an 8 or 9, I realize that for the average person out there, the films aren't quite as compelling. Still, it's a solid WWII propaganda film--an excellent movie to bolster the war effort and entertain at the same time. The only problems with the film, and they are minor, are that the plot is a tad formulaic and in a few scenes the plane did some turns and acrobatics no real plane at the time could have done. As I said, minor problems in an otherwise good film.
By the way, for some semi-insane dating advice listen to the guy playing Tierney's Uncle. The scene where he was giving advice to Foster made me smile.
Also by the way, while I said that Foster was mostly forgotten today, he and the Commander (Jack Holt) were pretty big stars back in the silent days. It's interesting here seeing them in roles suited to them in middle age, as they continued acting well past their days as top-billed stars.