Memphis Belle (1990)

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

If you haven't already seen Memphis Belle, go ahead and watch it before reading this review; it's reasonably entertaining, and I don't want to spoil it for you with my comments. Spoiler alert:I have watched Memphis Belle several times over the years, and it looks weaker each time. When it came out on VHS I gave a copy to a friend who was a long-time pilot, and he didn't think much of it. And I see from the review by Author: ianlouisiana from United Kingdom, someone who was there in England at the time, that the acting just doesn't match the way people behaved back then. My first thought on my latest viewing is that she is right, and almost everyone was over-acting, presumably at the insistence of the director, Michael Caton-Jones. Most of the performances are corny, even, sadly, John Lithgow's. But there is a deeper problem: All of the crew, except the pilot, behave like they were 12 years old. This is not how people behaved back then, and certainly not in the military during World War 2. Back then, graduating from high school was more like graduating from college is today; people were far more mature, because they had to be -- they had to find a job, and in the Depression. Being in the military aged you fast during WWII. Just look at the documentaries from the war. My guess is it added 10 years to your age in maturity. Plus, being in a flight crew was special duty, which, I assume, required extra maturity, given the danger, responsibility, and price of the airplane. I can't imagine the Army allowing such infantile whiners into a B17, or that they would still be so immature after 24 missions. Putting an embarrassing sign on the back of your buddy and other mean-spirited horseplay during a mission over Nazi Germany is hard to imagine in real life. If this were pure fiction and you wanted to give it a MASH touch of absurd humor, that's a director's right. But this was based on a true story, and a remarkable one, so the acting and script should have been more realistic. The movie's strength is giving a sense of the danger in a bombing run over Germany. but there are plenty of movies that do that, and better. Of course, one of the best air battle movie is "The Battle of Britain," and it's companion BBC documentary. I admire period movies that get the sense of the time right. It's not just about avoiding anachronistic items, but of getting the feel, the mood, the character of the period. Visually, Memphis Belle gets it. In other respects, the movie comes close, but doesn't quite succeed in transporting you back in time to 1943. The childish acting and silly gimmicks like the fellow going on and on about opening a national hamburger franchise get in the way. You feel that what they know about WWII was based on watching some WWII era B movies. An example of a movie that did succeed in recreating the war and time, totally, was Das Boot. It, too, was based on a true story, written by the embedded journalist. Another is Yanks. In 1990, when Memphis Belle was made, there were enough people still alive from that time to tell those involved what it was really like, plus there was the original documentary. But I guess that's not the sort of movie they really wanted to make. Too bad. It could have been a classic.---As a side note, I am saddened by the persistently anti-American sentiment expressed by so many reviewers over virtually any American war movie that does not co-star their country. One states that despite a British director, etc.: "Fair enough but couldn't the characters have mentioned that WW2 was a joint operation ? Watching this you'll be left thinking America was fighting alone." I can assure you, Theo Robertson from Isle Of Bute, Scotland, that while we are a nation of drooling dolts and imbeciles, no American is so stupid as to think the U.S. fought WWII alone. We know Britain fought, too, and bravely. We even know who your wartime leaders were: Prime Minister Sherlock Holmes followed by Colonel Blimp. Anyone who gets their history exclusively from the movies is a fool, so they are beyond help. But even if they did, they would not be this misinformed. All they would have to do is watch Patton to know about Britain's valuable contribution in Africa! (Just kidding.) And then there's A Bridge Too Far, from MGM, if you want co-star billing (and that other Bridge movie). Look, Britain, America (and William Wyler) made "Mrs. Minniver," and without even once mentioning Lend-Lease, so get off our backs!!!Have a nice day.

I first saw this movie on video round about 1991, when I was about seven years old or so. I enjoyed it then, because it had airplanes in it, and there was nothing particularly offensive or difficult for a seven year old boy to understand.Watching it again some nineteen years later, I'm struck by the exact same things. It's a very family-friendly war movie, earnestly trying to show us the difficult lives of American bomber pilots in Europe in 1943. The cast of characters come out of a guidebook for writing war movies, complete with The Religious One ("There's always a religious one," says John Lithgow's character), The Scared One, The Good-Luck Charm, The Smartass, and The Captain. The screenplay hits all the familiar notes: the crew pulling together for one last mission, overcoming obstacles, bonding as a surrogate family.The actors all do a good job. Reed Diamond, Sean Astin, Matthew Modine, and Eric Stoltz are the most noteworthy (and how young they all were in 1990!), plus Lithgow and David Strathairn on the ground. Modine is almost funny as the straight-laced pilot who seems uncomfortably aware of just how boring he really is. Stoltz stands out in the thankless role of the all-around nice guy who gets wounded.The flying scenes are exceptional. Real B-17s were filmed at real wartime airfields, and there's a bare-bones authenticity about a lot of it. The scenes inside the Memphis Belle, where most of the movie takes place, do an excellent job of showing you how cramped, cold, and noisy a place like that could be. Not to mention dangerous: the action scenes when German fighters attack the bombers flick by at a very fast pace, which must be something like what the bomber crews experienced. All this, of course, has been cleaned up for movie audiences: real bomber crews would never have taken off their oxygen masks or engaged in the lengthy conversations and horseplay featured in the film.So it's a sincere and generally harmless movie, saturated in nostalgia, motivated by a desire to pay tribute to its subjects. That leads it into clichéd territory, leaving me with the feeling that the producers dusted off a screenplay dating to the 1950s, only adding a few lines here and there for modern audiences. Not entirely a bad thing, mind you, but not all that it could have been. Notable, however, is the total absence of the sort of flag-waving patriotism we've come to expect from period war films: there's nary an American flag in sight, and the film is dedicated to all the pilots and aircrews who lost their lives in the war -- not just the Allies.

World War II has many memories in it's huge archives. But the ones which stand out in an audience's mind are the ones which recall family members who actually experienced them. This movie " Memphis Belle " reaches deep into the human Psyche and rekindles a plethora of war time conflicts. The actors chosen for this masterpiece are incredible as they superbly resurrect the dangerous era of the courageous men and their historic aircraft. Matthew Modine plays Capt. Dennis Dearborn, a stern commander who exhibits a tough veiner, but is inwardly aware and concern with every man in his crew. Tate Donovan is Lt. Sinclair, anxious to experience bravery as a necessary element to achieve fame. However when the war touches him, he realizes, it's not as glorious as he imagined. Eric Stoltz, D.B. Sweeney, Billy Zane, Sean Astin, Harry Connick Jr., Reed Diamond, Courtney Gains and Neil Giuntoli play the crew. Rounding out the cast, adding prestige and enhancing the over-all story are David Strathairn and John Lithgow. Together, this superior ensemble and the dramatic talent of the special effects specialists allowed the 'Belle' to rise center stage and display its last wartime flight. The result is nothing short of extraordinary. Behind the men and their plane is the memory of the thousands of brave airmen who gave their lives for their country. In short, their sacrifice becomes the lasting monument which continues to this day as a lasting tribute to our freedom. A great film which is sure to become a military Classic. Highly recommended! ****

This film has virtually nothing to do with the original "Memphis Belle" of 1944, except I suppose that it involves the crew of a B-17 on their final mission. Maybe a few duplicate shots. That's about it. It's a kind of cinematic coelacanth, a thing we'd long thought was extinct, surfacing now in a semi-fossilized form that seems to think it's being canny in showing off clichés that were obsolete years ago. Two notably good things about it. One is that it gives us the feeling of what it's really like to be aboard a bomber in combat, or at least I think it does, never having been in that situation myself. They've convinced me though. On the ground the big airplane shivers from the vibration of the four engines like a Magic Fingers mattress. Everyone and everything jiggles at high frequency. We see bombs armed in flight. We see what the target looks like through the bombardier's sight. We feel the airplane lurch upward after the couple of tons worth of bombs are released. And we catch some of the dynamics of the crew. The bombardier has posed as a doctor. One waist gunner plays grab*** with the other's religious medallion.The other outstanding feature is the aerial photography, or the computer-generated images. Everything is so crisp, so clean, so sky blue, except for those black blotches ahead and the drab B-17s droning their way to and from hell.It's extremely exciting too, once it gets off the ground. That's part of the problem. Everything we see happening to the Memphis Belle happened to one 8th Air Force bomber or another, but never to the same airplane on the same mission. It's as if all the very real dangers facing these fliers had been put into a duck press and slapped onto the plot. If you've seen airplane-in-jeopardy movies before, you'll find little that's innovative here. A man dangling out of a hole in the fuselage (twice). The near miss after takeoff. The sight of a buddy's ship going down. Should we throw the badly wounded radio operator out with a parachute over Germany in hopes that his life will be saved? We're running out of fuel -- throw out everything we don't need. Let's sing Danny Boy for good luck. Before the mission, the pilot stands alone under the moon next to The Memphis Belle and talks to his airplane. "You're a good lady. You've gotten us home every time so far." The cornball is exquisite. Ted Lawson never talked to his airplane like that in "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" and Guy Gibson in "The Dam Busters" wouldn't dream of it.The whole film is derivative, from the beginning to the end, and everything is spelled out in big letters like a child's alphabet book. The opening lines from a PR officer tell us a lot. "Let's see now. We have a guy from Omaha, then an Irishman from Boston," or something like that. The PR officer (John Lithgow) turns out to be a knucklehead ("Baloney is my business") but that doesn't stop the writers from using him as the crudest tool of exposition.The opening scene, a drunken party, is ripped off from "Das Boot," only here, in case you didn't know why the party was taking place, it's made plain for you. "I don't want to die!" one drunk screams at the sky. In "Das Boot" Wolfgang Peterson let you figure out for yourself that despair led to drunkenness. His writers thought you had enough in the way of inferential abilities to pick it up. These writers don't.The dialog is ludicrous, right out of a 1944 funnybook.Captain to crew: "Let's make this our best bomb run ever." Crew member: "Right down the pickle barrel!" Captain: "You bet!" Captain to crew: "Boys, nobody ever said this was gonna be all fun and games. We're here to do a job so let's do it. If we don't do it somebody else will have to come back and do it." There is virtually no swearing. It's alright for us to see a man's blood and guts splattered all over the nose, but we aren't allowed to hear a terrified or a wounded man shout **** or **** or even ****.I think the most nauseating bit that's included in this movie, from the point of view of poetics, is the damned dog. See, as in all other bombing movies, the ground crew are waiting tensely for the return of "their" airplanes and crew. They play desultory softball to distract themselves but glance into the skies from time to time. They have a dog. The dog mirrors the anxiety of the men, skulking around and looking worried. At one point he flops onto his belly, his chin buried in his paws, and seems to be looking airward. I think this is known as the pathetic fallacy.At least the writers left out the conflict of crew members about some mixed up love affairs back on the ground.Well -- the film may serve its didactic purpose anyway. Kids who don't know why this war was called World War TWO may learn something from it. (A student at a well-known university once complimented Barbara Tuchman after a lecture on World War I, saying he'd always wondered why the other was called WWII.) For the rest of us, if you can stomach that dog you can get through an exciting and well-photographed war movie.