Flying Tigers

I am a real sucker for some of the old Republic films--particularly the wartime films. Yes, I know they are NOT artistic masterpieces and the movies of course take advantage of many cinema clichés BUT they also deliver wonderful, if somewhat low-brow, entertainment.

Despite John Wayne being billed as the lead, he is in fact somewhat of a background figure during much of the movie. Instead, the main focus seems to be on the incredibly glib and cocky John Carrol. He's a jerk and he's terribly selfish but boy can he fly. And, Wayne, being an old pal of Carrol's knows that down deep Carrol will prove himself in the end.

Along the way, we are treated to a liberal dose of the nobility of our Chinese comrades in arms as well as the inherent decency of our volunteer pilots. While all basically true, it has all the expected touches of a WWII American propaganda film. For me, that's not really a bad thing, as this film and others like it succeed in being great entertainment. In fact, because of this, I have seen this film several times. It's not exactly deep or sophisticated, but sometimes we NEED a film we can just enjoy and not think too deeply about.

Here is a movie straight out of the annals of World War Two. The Japanese Empire was sweeping through Asia and destroying large parts of mainland China. Few of their adversaries were able to stop them, but one unit made history, by encountering them over the skies of China. In 1940-41 General Claire Chennault formed a mercenary group of American Flighter pilots to combat the invading Japanese. The movie based on their exploits is called " Flying Tigers " and star's John Wayne as Capt. Jim Gordon. Although an America propaganda film, it was designed to stimulate America's involvement in the war. Later, it came to symbolize America's contribution to the multi-national effort to fight the Japanese. The movie is in Black and White, crude, coarse and blatantly patriotic. Still it gave a boost to morale at a time when things were not going well for the U.S. or China. As a result with the additional cast of John Carroll, Paul Kelly, Gordon Jones and Edmund MacDonald as 'Blackie Bales' the movie succeeds in creating a rousing yarn of heroic young men and the niche they created over the Asian skies. ****

Several friends of mine flew with the AVG. One of them who attended the premiere (c. October '42) recalls that he and a couple other Tigers were so embarrassed by the film that they were caught sneaking out of the theater.

However, the loathing of John Wayne contained in other reviews on this site demonstrates a total lack of objectivity. Wayne was 35 at the time of Pearl Harbor, and not even his friendship with then-Cdr. John Ford could get him accepted for military service. (according to one bio, his distinctive walk resulted from a football injury.) On one tour of the Pacific, Wayne got dead drunk with some fighter pilots in New Guinea. They placed his inert form on a cot and carried it into the middle of the compound and allowed him to awake with a hangover: stark naked. He rolled over and went back to sleep...

Whatever anybody thinks of Wayne or the Vietnam War, he was still visiting troops in-country at age 63.

Many of the posts here are so filled with diatribes and inaccuracies that I had to laugh! One poster complained that the Flying Tigers actually were only flight trainers for the Chinese Air Force, and only lost three pilots in combat. At least two complained that John Wayne was a draft dodger. One stated that the Tigers were in combat two years before Pearl Harbor. One stated that the Japanese were unfairly treated as bad guys in the film. One declared that the Flying Tigers were up against a superior plane in the Japanese Zero....

First off, the Flying Tigers started training in September of '41 and were disbanded in July of '42. In that roughly ten month period they shot down 286 CONFIRMED kills for the loss of 12 Flying Tigers. They were not "Chinese Air Force flight instructors!" Their kill-to-loss ratio remains one of the finest in aviation combat history. Secondly, the Tigers never encountered the Zero in Combat. Their foes were primarily J.A.A.F. pilots, and the Zero was a Navy plane. Third, the Japanese indeed DID SHOOT AT PILOTS in parachutes and in life rafts, whenever possible, because they were taught that the enemy must be killed at all costs, lest he survive to fight you another day. Fourth, the Japanese committed the most UNSPEAKABLE horrors against the Chinese people during WW II, as the book, "The Rape of Nanking" can testify to. Fifth, John Wayne was NOT a draft dodger. He had a bum ear due to an infection which rendered him physically 4-F. Sixth, the outdoor sequences of "The Flying Tigers" were not filmed in Northridge, California, but rather in the high desert area around Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the (successful) attempt to give the foliage a more "foreign" look.

As to the film itself, I would suggest you go to the Fighter Museum in Phoenix, AZ, or the Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH, and find out just how close the film was to reality. The Tigers WERE usually outnumbered about 8 to 1 in combat. The 3 squadrons of the Tigers DID USE outdoor facilities as shown in the film. The Tigers were indeed mercenaries, paid by the kill, as well as by the month. The Tigers WERE frequently short of spares and fuel. The Tigers DID have nicknames, like "Tex" (David Lee Hill) and "Pappy" (Gregory Boyington). The Tigers DID have a few beautiful nurses on station. (In fact one of them, Jane Foster, ended up marrying a Tiger, who was subsequently shot down and killed a week before they were to leave for the States.) Truthfully, the only real overt fiction in the film is the pre-Pearl Harbor combat, as in fact, the Tigers did not start combat operation until after Pearl Harbor, (being in training prior to that.) Why is the film so accurate? Because two guys who weren't able to cut it as Tigers decided to take the story of the Tigers to Hollywood to sell it. They were the "technical advisers" for Republic, which was able to glean much about the unit from them.

Leave your politics at home and take a second look. This is actually an excellent depiction of the organization and the men, backed up with a superior special effects unit and a great score. (Both nominated for Oscars.)

John Wayne's first war film was one of his best, a solid actioner with Wayne giving great presence as the leader of a fighter squadron doing battle against the Japanese invader over the skies of China in the dark days before the U.S. entry into World War II.

Wayne plays Jim "Pappy" Gordon, a variation on the many flinty-commander-with-heart-of-gold characters he would play in films to follow like "Sands Of Iwo Jima" and "Fighting Seabees." Gordon is less flinty than most of them, maybe because his men are volunteers or maybe because his girlfriend Brooke (Anna Lee) is stationed on the same airbase. While the Japanese take their toll on his men, Gordon's toughest job may be keeping peace in his squadron when smug gloryhog Woody Jason (John Carroll) arrives.

When I first saw "Flying Tigers" as a boy, the on-screen gore made the strongest impression. In those days, before pay television, it was something to see a Japanese pilot grab his face, blood oozing through his fingers. Times have changed, of course, but one is still impressed by the well-rendered dogfight sequences, for which Ted Lydecker was nominated for an Oscar. Though it's troubling to be entertained by what amounts to real images of people getting killed, director David Miller manages to incorporate actual combat footage very well into battle sequences that alternate with Lydecker miniature work and shots of actors in their cockpits, better than the more acclaimed director Nicholas Ray later did in another Wayne air war film, "Flying Leathernecks."

"Flying Tigers" contains one key historical inaccuracy: While assembled in the months before Pearl Harbor, the Tigers didn't see action until December 20, 1941. This is an important caveat, but the inaccuracy allows for one of the very first and best examples of that classic movie cliché, where a dramatic scene ends with a glimpse of a desk calendar showing the date "Dec. 7." The scene that follows is one of those Wayne moments that resonated especially in theaters in 1942 and still packs a punch now: Pappy alone by a radio, standing expressionless while a cigarette smolders in his fingers, listening to President Roosevelt declare war.

Neither Wayne's iconographic stature or final victory against the Japanese were sure things when "Flying Tigers" came out in 1942; we tend to take more for granted and give films like this less credit. Wayne was 35 and not a real soldier, yet he came to define the war effort for many. Judging from the way some comments here attack him as a straw dog for present U.S. war policy in Iraq, Wayne's potency as a symbol remains undimmed.

Climbing off his P-40 after an early mission, Wayne is shown a row of bullet holes on his fuselage. "Termites," he says laconically, before striding away.

I give a lot of credit here to Miller, who knew what he had in Wayne before anyone else did, and uses the actor's terse authority to great effect. Miller was making propaganda, yes, but effectively and sensitively: We see Chinese children victimized by war, including one shot of a wounded child crying after a bombing clearly modeled on a famous war photo of the period. Unlike other wartime films which went heavy on ethnic stereotyping, the Japanese are seen as skilled, ruthless adversaries who require resolve to face down.

The film does lose altitude at the end, when Wayne goes off on a hare-brained bombing mission and Carroll has a "why-we-fight" epiphany that rings rather hollow. Maybe it's because he's playing a heel, but I find Carroll hard to take, with his Clark Gable mannerisms and the way he seems to always play to the camera rather than the other actors. There's also a little too much melodrama between Wayne and Lee that feels out of place in a war film.

But "Flying Tigers" has weathered the years better than most films of its kind, and is a historic landmark both for its effective action scenes and its pioneering use of Wayne as cultural touchstone. More than 60 years later, it still packs a punch.