Carl Buckland

Ridiculous romance story, insufficient flying story, nonexistent overall military story, what’s not to like? The title is completely misleading because this is definitely not illustrative of the organization it purports to be about. Tab Hunter promotion piece not worthy of viewing.

Well done illustration of military discipline and obedience to the chain of command (as opposed to other films that seemed to be more anti-military). There’s truth in the statement that a ship can only have one captain. Someone has to be in charge, and if you're in charge’ then truly be ‘in charge’. Clark Gables character embodied that idea very well, Burt Lancaster’s character did as well. Major characters were great, and support cast was terrific, special effects were of their time. Models, guide wires, and pools were the order of the day for underwater shots - you can’t miss them. The intelligence tip was surprisingly good - discarded trash can give away more info than you think. It was very realistic in another sense in that they didn’t go back to port just because someone had died. They still had the patrol to complete and torpedoes to shoot, ships to sink. Well done. Great to have watched it again.

So in the future humans develop time travel and come back to the present to take current humans and take them to the future to fight aliens that are killing all of the humans, but the humans only have to fight for seven days. Also the future humans only take people who are going to die before the future alien war gets here to avoid a time paradox but they’ll also invent a toxin that a current human has to bring back from the future so it can be mass produced and the alien threat eliminated before the war begins and the future humans invent time travel or the toxin. Phew! Glad they didn’t have to deal with any time paradox….. Other than that it was a pretty good shoot-em-up movie with C-130 cargo aircraft that can fly undetected into Russia, gotta love it!

Decent action yarn with a plethora of predictable shadow government tropes. Peter’s love interest Rose is a completely unbelievable piece of baggage that is supposed to be a tech whiz genius who apparently never takes direction or complies with instructions, and doesn’t go home to California where she created a biometric tracking program (where have we seen that before?). There’s no sense of Night Agents being a larger organization due to the show’s focus on Peter and Catherine (his boss). Security cameras are controlled by a box in the basement, no sweat - just walk down and hit two buttons in the middle of the panel. Need a guy to fly to Iran that afternoon and fly back that same night - how many hours does that flight take? Never says. Entertainment for sure, binge worthy, but be prepared for rich people are evil and the folks in charge of the intelligence services are all busy in-fighting with each other - thank goodness there’s one agent who can make it work.

Too many problems to address with a movie based on a con-man’s lies. Nobody from a reputable authoritative source can corroborate anything that is in the movie. The guy was a hustler that was a circus horse handler for Ringling Brothers, never met Bill Cody (or star in his Wild West Show). Bill Cody museum never heard of this guy. He later dug subway tunnels and abandoned his wife and family for a younger woman. Some Western hero. There is an association long distance horse racers who never heard of this guy. There never was a 3000 mile race across the Arabian Peninsula, crossing how many different tribal territories? And a cowboy openly drinking alcohol in a Muslim country? Don’t try it, it’s not a good decision. The mouthy English woman talking a lot of smack to Arab men in the late 1800s? Really? The Sioux nation never heard of this guy either but why ruin a compelling story right? Barren desert scenes had too many studio shots inserted. Hopkins character fired his pistol a lot but his cartridge belt stayed full. A lot of running a horse full tilt for extended periods of time - not much else. As simple entertainment this is okay, outdoor cinematic scenes work good, everyone likes to watch running horses, just stop claiming it’s ’based on a true story’ if there is no true story.

The movie has real enough cinematic impact, the German aircraft (a grand total of 3 for the entire film) and the single German U-boat are reasonably rendered - and the three or four mines seen up close. That’s the entire threat for the movie. And to the reviewers who posted details like ‘delivering supplies to a Norwegian outpost’ or ‘Allies on the Eastern Front’ if you don’t bother to understand the topic don’t talk about it. This is a movie about delivering supplies to the Russians who were toe to toe with the Germans (who invaded Russia) via the Northern sea route. The Germans occupied Norway which made a very nasty sailing route, due to sea state and weather, much worse. The job was full of tension and apprehension and stress, but not a lot of the action expected in a war movie - like two airplanes shot down early in the movie. Not much of a people movie, character development is nonexistent- the people you dislike at the beginning are the people you dislike at the end, the ones you don’t care about one way or the other do not change. One character declares that they haven’t been home in four years - that’s the extent of their backstory. If the crew dislikes their captain enough to turn on him - explain the why. The Germans were a ‘threat’ but they weren’t all over the place, this was not a dodge and survive fast-paced thriller - it was a freighter going off-course because the first mate wanted to go AWOL from the assignment, but got blocked by sea ice, painted the ship white to blend in with the surrounding area (because the only gun was frozen), and when the last German airplane didn’t pick them out from the icy water and flew away, the first mate decided to finish the job and sail to Russia. The end. How much fuel did they have to go off course by a couple of hundred miles and then turn around and go on? Don’t know and don’t care. It had moments worth watching. The civilian sailors of WWII do not get enough respect and credit for their actions, there should be more movies that address that deficiency.

If they used a military advisor then they probably picked up some random shooter from their local paintball range - next time try harder. Inaccuracies abound from uniforms to equipment to command structure to anything and everything (start with rank insignias and go from there). FYI - if you’re trying to sneak up on people don’t stand out in the open with your dog and lighting up an uncovered cigarette…just food for thought. No concept of operations, a Brigadier General sitting in front of some ammo boxes with his private radio network apparently, an Engineer Corporal in charge of a outpost that doesn’t have a clue as to what he’s supposed to be doing, yeah it was a painful experience to be sure to watch - probably worse to make.

It’s a movie about Santa being kidnapped and Dwayne Johnson trying to rescue him, take it for what it is. Reviewers who have an axe to grind about Christmas, or Santa Claus in general, go find a purpose to your life - you knew what this movie was about before you saw it, so why did you bother? The most interesting character was Santa’s brother, Grampus or Krampus depending on how you want to spell it. Second runner up might be the talking polar bear named Garcia. I loved towards the end when Grampus/Krampus was explaining how to deal with the witch - particularly the shrug and the comment ‘my ex’…. It’s all a big loop from the North Pole back to the North Pole storywise for a massive ‘sleigh’ pulled by gigantic weirdly antlered reindeer. Harmless visually entertaining movie that requires the suspension of disbelief- but what CGI movies don’t do the same?

This performance by John Wayne was probably one of his top 5 performances, The Shootist, The Cowboys, The Searchers, maybe Red River and then Sands of Iwo Jima. The scenes in camp are the least believable, the apparent lack of coherent structure or directed activity was at odds with my experience in the 70s, and were apparently only written for character development and/or conflict and not for accuracy. Military discipline has never been portrayed accurately in most war movies. The professional reviewers for this film seem to be somewhat lazy; it’s not about the Army, and the characters are not soldiers, and they’re not marines - they’re Marines, it’s a title not a description of some iguana from the coast of Madagascar. If you don’t bother to understand the subject then don’t write about it. Oh yeah - it’s Sergeant not Sargeant. Sgt Stryker’s death on Suribachi was ignoble and accurate to the point that most deaths are not heroic, and there are far more wounded than KIA - the clean one bullet vs the maiming aftermath, topic for another movie. Wayne’s portrayal of a flawed personality was good, the supporting cast was okay - but just because someone is the son of someone I served with doesn’t mean they don’t get an attitude adjustment for talking smack, this was soft pedaled way too much. Good movie, entertaining but I’d still rank The Searchers higher as a John Wayne performance.

The movie was a tremendous success as a Bond film - loved the ending on the shores of Lake Geneva, shows why you don’t answer calls from numbers you don’t recognize. I can see why Mr. Craig doesn’t want to do these again -tons of physical acting aka action scenes, gotta take a toll on any actor. The one big plot hole though involved the high tech money exchange at the end - when the guy in Switzerland told Bond the withdrawal was taking place at the moment, why didn’t Bond say ‘Stop it’ or ‘Shut it down’ or something? They have all the high tech gadgets to wirelessly transfer the money - they don’t have a stop button?