Flying Tigers (1942)

I am just really into WWII pilot movies right now. This one takes place in China with the volunteer force the Flying Tigers, who flew over China before the U.S. entered the war. This movie would be a stinker if its flight sequences weren't totally fucking cool. The script is fairly bad, and John Wayne is horribly, terribly wooden in this. It's odd – he's obviously a great movie star, but he lacks any charm in Flying Tigers for reasons I don't really understand. John Carroll, on the other hand, is every bit the movie star and actually gives a sensitive, intriguing performance. Gordon Jones is great in this too, and the special effects, the photography, the sound, really everything about the flight sequences and the explosions is excellent. This film premiered on Oct 2, 1942, after it ends with a sequence in Dec 1941, and it was clearly a rush job on the pre-production side, so I guess I can't be too mad at the half-written script.