WasAnnon
Slow pace in the most part of the movie.
Micah Lloyd
Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.
Stephan Hammond
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Darin
One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
Brandin Lindsey
Usually introduced as an early action film, this movie has a surprising amount of depth and conflict among the characters. The bonds of brotherhood, romance, and questioning the meaning of life are much more prevalent factors in the film than war and combat. Created by the eccentric Howard Hughes with a notoriously eventful production period, one is blind-sided by the character development found within. Even today, over 80 years after it's production, the struggles of the characters are still relevant and I find myself relating to both brothers.Ironically, the action parts of this action film bring the entire picture to a screeching halt. Extremely early in action filming, the action scenes are difficult to follow and full of awkward camera angles. After a while, I lose track of who is shooting at who and become incredibly bored with the action scenes. Overall, not a bad movie. A great example of a decent film of the period, with a little bit of everything. Definitely worth a watch.
Dalbert Pringle
Back in 1930, multi-millionaire, Howard Hughes (25 at the time) may have been the richest kid on the block, but, regardless of that, when it came to competently directing a Hollywood, adventure movie he was sure clueless, as was clearly evident here with Hell's Angels.Even for a film from that particular era of early movie-making, Hell's Angels was still noticeably mediocre and below-par in so many ways.With this film's budget being $4 million (making it the most expensive picture of its time), I have to tell you that I honestly couldn't see (by the final product) where all of this money was spent.From my point of view - The one and only reason for watching Hell's Angels was for its fairly impressive aerial dogfight sequences (which, unfortunately, happened so few and far between throughout the story).Without these action scenes, this film would've been a real forgettable, nothing picture. And, believe me, at 2 hours and 11 minutes, Hell's Angels was already running on empty, anyway, right from the very start.
Tad Pole
. . . who proves to be a Brit! The power of life to imitate art cannot be overestimated, and Howard Hughes was a master of insinuating his morbid fantasies into the fabric of civilization forevermore. He famously designed the cantilevered brassiere for one of his movies, which persisted to Madonna and beyond. Here, in the oddly-titled HELL'S ANGELS, the Allied anti-heroes use suicide as a military tactic more than once. Not to be outdone, dozens of Germans march out the bomb bay of their dirigible without parachutes, viewing themselves as expendable ballast. Even fratricide is not off limits to the main character, and if Howard could have worked a little incest into the plot I'm sure he would have. Hughes lured three stunt pilots to their deaths in "real life" during the making of this flick. It got to the point where Howard had to put his mouth where his money was, and fly his death crates himself for the stunts toward the end of the shoot. As a death-obsessed crazy living a charmed life, he survived to film this movie not once, but twice, making it the most expensive flick until GONE WITH THE WIND came out. Adjusted for ego and inflation, it tops HEAVEN'S GATE and ISHTAR put together as a monument to the wrong-headed promulgation of dangerous ideas which obviously inspired PEARL HARBOR. Too bad we do not know what variation of "Rosebud" Hughes was muttering as he passed away in his museum of his own carefully bottled and preserved urine.
Wil C. Fry
While I've seen a lot of war movies, including most of the WWII-era films, I don't think I've been impressed by any of them like I was with Hell's Angels.The staged and choreographed aerial battles are amazing to watch, and even more astounding when one considers how they were filmed, and the technology available at the time.Other than the aerial dogfights, little of the movie holds up to today's standards of film-making, but is impressive considering the standards of the day. I challenge any viewer to watch Hell's Angels back-to-back with contemporary films (late 1920s) and not come away amazed.