Barranca, South America. Entertainer Bonnie is hapy to meet two fellow Americans, pilots working for a small company that carries airmail. However, the said pilot crashes that night due to fog, upsetting Geoff, the main pilot of the company, and others, including Kid. Bonnie stays and falls in love with Geoff. One day MacPherson shows up to ask for work, and Geoff begrudgingly gives him a position, since MacPherson is now married to Geoff’s ex-love Judy, and abandoned Kid’s brother in a plane that crashed. During a dangerous flight, which has to be flown during bad weather to meet the criteria for obtaining a government business deal, MacPherson refuses to abandon the damaged plane, landing it, but co-pilot Kid is wounded and dies. Geoff goes on to fly, and Bonnie stays to wait for him.
In one of Howard Hawks’ lesser films, it becomes clear that just his themes about friendship and loyalty alone cannot carry the whole story if it simply has no inspiration. This aviation drama about pilots is bland, schematic, meandering and overlong, though some charm is given to it thanks to the solid performances by Cary Grant and Jean Arthur. As Hawks himself established, a movie works if it has “three good scenes, no bad scenes”. There are indeed no bad scenes here. But no good scenes, either. The one that comes close is when the character MacPherson is introduced, an outcast due to his cowardly blunder in the past, and the protagonist Geoff says this while holding a drink: “Even you can’t ruin a good liquor!” The finale in which MacPherson undergoes a character arc and decides to show courage and do the right thing is noble, and follows Hawks’ often theme of overcoming weaknesses. Unfortunately, Geoff is a boring and unexciting character, as is Bonnie, and thus the story fails on its most important target, the two main characters, whereas the ending is abrupt and unsatisfying. One sequence in particular is ridiculous: Bonnie wants to stop Geoff from flying an airplane during bad weather by pointing a pistol at him. They agree she would not hurt him, so Geoff turns around and heads towards the door, but Bonnie clumsily puts the pistol away at the table—and it fires all by itself, wounding Geoff at the shoulder, so he is unable to pilot. Unconvincing plot ploy. Even worse, conversely, is that Geoff, some time later, still heads off into a plane to co-pilot it in the last scene, nonetheless, as if the screenwriters forgot he is wounded! Not every movie from the 30s reached the status of a classic. For some, that is unfair. But in this case, it is justified. This film is an easily watchable flick, but at 120 minutes, it needed much better written dialogues and ideas to appeal to more than just aviation fans.
Grade:+
No comments:
Post a Comment