Search - Flying Tigers on DVD

Christina K. (christy) from LE SUEUR, MN
Reviewed on 7/2/2010...

great movie an in good shape

0 of 2 member(s) found this review helpful.

Duke's first war movie...A Great One!!

Carolyn Falconer | Upstate, NY | 01/02/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I think the aspect that I enjoyed most about this movie is that even though it is a John Wayne movie, we see a lot of character development from the other actors as well. In 1942, John Wayne was not yet a top 10 movie actor, so the director did not have to have the whole movie spin around him (not that there's anything wrong with that!). But this movie gives us insight into a number of men the Duke have under his command, and the movie is a much richer experience for it. As for the transfer to DVD, it varies from good to excellent. Certainly not as good as Republic's 50th anniversary version, released on Laserdisc. But the DVD has behind the scenes information on the cast members, after the movie finishes. All in all, a great John Wayne movie that no fan should be without!"

Entertaining morale booster

Steven Hellerstedt | 12/12/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Early World War Two film that celebrates, sort of, Claire Chennault's volunteer air group in China prior to the United States' entry into the war, FLYING TIGERS opens with a testimonial dedication by Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and spends its remaining 100 minutes test flying a P-40's worth of war-flick clichés.

John Wayne plays squadron commander Jim Gordon, a man who doesn't let the burden of command interfere too much with his romance of pretty Red Cross nurse Brooke Elliott (Anna Lee.) Capt. Gordon recruits Clark Gable-lookalike Woody Jason (John Carroll,) who proves his stuff to the audience - Gordon probably already knew he was a good pilot - by landing a commercial plane in a raging storm on, as the air controller breathlessly tells us above the roar of the tropical storm, a wing and a prayer. The other wing is on fire. Convincingly, too. The special effects in FLYING TIGERS are impressive. Howard Lydecker was nominated for an Academy Award in 1943 for his work here, losing out to the team responsible for the effects in Cecil B. DeMille's `Reap the Wild Wind.' Lydecker's work is almost seamlessly integrated into shots of actual dogfights to very good effect.

What doesn't fit so smoothly is the hackneyed love story. Women were squeezed away from the front line as the war progressed, but in 1942 there were an awful lot of Pacific based military stories that had an awful lot of corny love sub-plots. FLYING TIGERS is bloated with some naïve patriotism, too. There weren't a whole lot of `based-on-fact' stories to tell in 1942, fewer yet that didn't feature doomed military outposts. Chennault was flying missions in China prior to U.S. involvement in the war, and FLYING TIGERS does the best it can to finesse the fact that his flyers were mercenaries - $500 per Japanese plane shot down is the going rate in the movie. Woody Jason, causing what plot roughage was allowed in 1942, is shunned by his comrades because he's eager to make money by shooting down as many Japanese planes as he can. The others, the good pilots, send most of their money to the widows of the fallen. Of course, there's always that last, redemptive Dangerous Mission to be flown that usually closes the curtain in movies like this.

It's almost ludicrous to fault a sixty-year-old movie for being predictable, or debit it for its use of clichés. FLYING TIGERS was a morale booster for the home front in 1942, and on that basis it works well enough. Wayne is appropriately commanding, and Carroll makes a good foil as the immature goof-off. The star of this movie, though, is the special effects, which still look pretty good today.

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Flying Tigers, flying to glory

Daniel Lee Taylor | GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas United States | 03/07/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"An excellent John Wayne movie that takesm place during the second World War. John Wayne is the leader of a group of pilots in the AVG or Flying Tigers. He recruits an old friend to join. John Carroll plays the hot shot pilot who is only out for glory and pay. After a tragic incident, will he grow up? Lots of action, humor and even some romance provided by Anna Lee."