Rating: - Gripping Story
When I first started watching this film, I thought it was about WWII. Hence, I was disappointed when I found that it was about Korea, but I soon lost all disillusionment. The story caught and held me very quickly. The dialogue is well written as it shows the feelings of the pilots about the futility of their continuing mission. The scene when one pilot has to guide his blinded friend back to the carrier is definitely a literal "knuckle-biter", as mentioned by another reviewer. I highly recommend this story to anyone. Period.
Rating: - A View of the Korean War Through Naval Aviation
This is a spectators view of how the Korean War was fought by carrier aircraft and about the pilots who flew round-trip sorties to their assigned targets. The "spectator" is the ship's flight surgeon who starts to tell the story to a visiting friend (and the audience) while on board the aircraft carrier.
Aircraft transported their pilots who "commuted" to the war with hope for a safe return to a warm bed, a hot meal and needed rest until their next assignment. A far cry from the previous bloody war within which many of the pilots were veterans.
Rating: - An excellent look at the Air War in Korea
Perhaps the most under-rated war film ever made, "Men of the Fighting Lady" is a fine piece of work. Like James Michener's "Bridges at Toko-Ri" this story centers on Naval Aviation during the Korean War. Taken from stories originally published in "The Saturday Evening Post," this is an engrossing and moving story with acting that is first class (Walter Pidgeon and Van Johnson head an outstanding cast of familiar faces). Though the print is decidely more grainy than that of "Bridges at Toko-Ri" (both movies use some of the same footage) the story is just as compelling.
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