Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

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

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

swojtak I saw this movie in the late 1950's or early 1960's on TV and it has always stuck with me. The scene that stands out vividly is when Robert Ryan walks into the church and yells, "The Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor". That scene has stuck in my head over 50 years. Oddly it seems that the ending involves bombing Nagoya. The movie went from Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor to the U.S. bombing the Japanese homeland really quickly. Another interesting thing is the movie never uses the word Norton Bombsight. At the time of the movie, even the word Norton was secret. Also, you never see the actual bomb sight only something being carried in a cloth bag by two airmen. Even a picture of the sight was secret. I did like the picture because it shows the training the men received. It seems like a lot of training just to push a button. I also like of part of the Bombardier controlling the plane. The part of the movie seems right in that the plane, pilot, ground crew, and everything else is there just to take the Bombardier to the target so he can push a button. The Pilot and Bombardier is like playing golf. The drive is for the show (pilot) but the putt (bombardier) is for the dough!. The rest was over the top--the oath and song of the Bombardier. Lastly, wasn't the actor who played the Japanese officer also played "Harry Hoo" on the TV show "Get Smart". All in all a film worth watching.

andrewsarchus Basically a typical propaganda film for the last good war. But there were a couple things that struck me. First was the use of mouthed epithets. In two cases the Scott character mouths one, once at the beginning when he drops his bomb off target during the bomb-off ("dammit") and once when he is trying to sway a bombardier into being a pilot ("s*%t"). I could be wrong about the second instance but I replayed it several times and that's what it looks like to me. The third case is when the Anne Shirley character wishes the O'Brien character goodbye and good luck ("Give 'em hell") over the roar of the engines. She must have thought that was too unladylike because she clearly says "heck". I also found interesting the character that has moral problems with bombing, specifically bombing civilians. The avuncular superior officer assures him that only military targets will be hit due to the precision of the bombsight used. Given what we know about the LeMay's later strategy of firebombing Japanese cities into oblivion this scene plays with not a little irony. I remember McNamara's quoting of LeMay in "The Fog of War", something to the effect that if the US did not win the conflict he would be tried as a war criminal. The ending is way overwrought, in keeping with the movie. It reminded me a bit of the end of White Heat (I'm not comparing the films, just the ending!). Maybe it's just 'cause he gets blowed up. Blowed up real good!!!

Robert J. Maxwell Flag-waver about the training and tsuris of bombardiers during World War II. It's kind of interesting to hear about the motives of these cadets and informative to learn about their training program. The uniforms are nice, and sometimes Randy Scott as the only pilot involved in the program wears a dashing white scarf under his leather flight jacket. The aerial scenes are actually pretty well done, considering what the budget must have been. There's very little air combat but the effects are effective. During a night raid by B-17s on Nagoya (which never happened) the bombers are attacked by Japanese fighters and someone went to the trouble of showing us that the line of tracer bullets lags behind the traverse of the gun firing them. It's like spraying a garden hose rapidly from side to side. Considering that the target is moving in three dimensions it's a wonder that any of them are hit.Let's see. I think that's about it for the best parts. The movie seems a slapdash affair with some miscasting and a weak script.Pat O'Brian is not a hard-nosed disciplinarian of a commanding officer. Pat O'Brian is Father Duffy. The actor who plays "Chico Rafferty" can't do a believable Hispanic accent. Abner Biberman is a Japanese sergeant who simply cannot do a Japanese accent. "Sooo -- you sink you vill not speak? You are long about zat." There's a lot of unengaging friendly competition for the affection of one young woman who happens to work as O'Brian's secretary. It's made manifest at the beginning of the film that most of the office staff will be women because "they're more efficient at it than men." But everybody's after this one babe. (Maybe because she's the daughter of the millionaire pioneer airman who built the field.) O'Brian even proposes gruffly to her. I half expected her to say "you're married to the Air Force." A terrible song is pounded into our ears -- "Rah, Rah, Rah, for the BOMBARDIERS!" (I couldn't help being reminded of Mel Brooks' parody, "Jews in Space.") One of the trainees is doing poorly because, although he's bright and capable, he seems timid. Before the board, he explains that he keeps thinking of the people who will be under his bombs. His mother had called him a "murderer". The general patiently explains that, well, son, don't think of them as people. Think of them as the enemy's arsenal. Don't believe everything your mother tells you. And pray to God for the courage to bomb the crap out of those monkeys. Something very much like that, no kidding.One of the more exhilarating moments is near the end. Scott's lead bomber has been shot down. He and (a miscast) Barton MacLane as the comic relief sergeant are captured. Scott escapes and drives a flaming truck into the middle of an ammunition dump to provide a fire that will guide the B-17s. He leans out of the window, grins up at the sky, and shakes his fist, shouting, "Come AWN, you BOMBARDIERS!" (They come.) The film was thrown together, I guess, and the script left deliberately at a level that school kids would understand. I don't mean to loose an entire salvo on the film. I've watched it two or three times now and find much of it enjoyable, particularly the scenes of action aloft and training below. But I can't get through it without wincing now and then when it turns into a berserk kind of "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" piece of lowbrow propaganda. It isn't the propaganda that I mind, so much as the fact that it's pretty brutally presented. "Triumph of the Will" is propaganda too -- and propaganda in an evil cause -- yet it's a far superior film. For effective propaganda from our side, delicately blending training, romance, and action, see "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo." Still, as I say, the kids may enjoy "Bombardier" from beginning to end.

bkoganbing Pat O'Brien takes his Knute Rockne character and joins the Army Air Corps in Bombardier and he and Randolph Scott have a disagreement as far as air tactics go. Scott wants to do things as they do in the RAF where he's been an observer. Fly in low and drop bombs and avoid being shot at.O'Brien is more interested in technology. Develop and learn how to use an accurate bombsight so you can be up around 20,000 feet and only have to worry about enemy planes which presumably your fighter escort has to deal with.But since these guys are friends it's a good natured fight as both are in the business of training bombardiers. Among the familiar faces they train are Eddie Albert and Robert Ryan before both went in the service themselves. Bombardier is so very dated now, but still entertaining. The advances in technology are light years beyond what O'Brien and Scott are dealing with. Film buffs who are air historians might like it though.