Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Robert J. Maxwell It's 1918 and the war is being waged on the battlefields of France -- and over those battlefields too. Richard Dix wants no part of it. However, his girl friend, the cute and saucy Elizabeth Allen, shames him into enlisting, and he becomes a fighter pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corpe and is sent overseas, where he is soon joined by Allen as a nurse. In his first combat mission, he flies as part of the squadron, manages to get on the six o'clock position of a "Heinie" but can't bring himself to pull the trigger on his machine guns. His superior officer, Ralph Bellamy, chews him out.On a later flight, after watching a friend being shot down, he become animated and scores his first "kill." And, actually, he feels pretty good about when he thinks it over. He shoots down numerous other Heinies and his score creeps up until it's about 40. (Historically, Eddie Rickenbacker was the highest scoring American ace with 26 aerial victories.) By now, Dix has begun to enjoy his job and has a sneaky tactic whereby he leaves the squadron and pulls up into a position that puts his airplane between the enemy and the sun, thus blinding the Heinies to his attack. In World War II, we accused the Japanese of being sneaky for doing the same thing. (You can ignore that gloss if you want.) Meanwhile, his commanding officer, Ralph Bellamy, is getting furious. In not playing with the team, Dix has lessened its strength by one airplane, and all for his own self aggrandizement. "You'll do as you're told -- and that's an order!", or words to the same effect. But does Dix do it? Are you kidding? He's not about to submerge his identity, his prowess, into that of his squadron.And he's still up there, lingering around in the vicinity of the sun, when a Heinie plane flies over the base and drops a message about a squadron member who had been shot down and captured, reassuring the boys that the prisoner is alive and doing well Then Dix dives out of the sun and wrecks the German airplane with aplomb.The Heinie had no chance to defend himself but somehow Dix's scalp has been grazed and he winds up in the hospital. His bed is next to that of a very young pilot who constantly moans in pain and begs for water. Dix tells him to shut up but learns from a nurse that the patient can't drink anything because he's been shot through the stomach and is dying. While listening to the wounded boy Dix is stunned to learn that this is the Heinie pilot he'd just shot down, only a cadet with few hours flying time. Chagrin time for Dix. He accepts Bellamy's offer of an instructor's job back in the states but when taunted by some of his squadron mates, he decides to regress and go back to killing.The only problem is that once in the air, again at a Heinie's six, he can't bring himself to pull the trigger. He and his cute and saucy girl friend are finally together, hugging each other decorously among the wildflowers and dreaming of a home and four children.It's an anti-war movie from 1933, with World War I safely behind the audience. Nobody's performance stands out especially, nor does anyone's performance torpedo the movie. There is some genuine flight footage and a lot of model work. There's little ambiguity about a defeat. Just about everyone who is downed does a nose dive into the earth but -- this being 1933 -- there are not yet bouquets of exploding fireballs with each mishap.The moral evolution of Dix's character is kind of interesting and I rather enjoyed it for all its primitive techniques. I liked it too because it SHOWS us how to dislike war without a single sermon being preached. Not that I mind the pep talks that show up so often in movies about war but they're usually so unoriginal, so filled with clichés. It's not often we hear anything like "when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger."

jimel98 Potential SPOILER.OK, so it's not a great movie. For it's time, it was probably considered pretty damn good but some movies, and this is just my humble opinion, just don't hold up over time. Albert Fin....sorry, Richard Dix was a pretty OK actor, as one other reviewer put it, a bit hammy, but over all, for the 30s, not bad but I have to admit, his maniacal killer stuff was the stuff that modern film considers parody. His obsession with the kill (a guy who was very much a pacifist) was maybe a tad overdone. However, from a psychological standpoint, what a very interesting character study. I'd LOVE to see this movie remade with a more gradual change in the character instead of almost immediately, though you can see how getting MAD can change a person's outlook.I'm not sure if that was really a spoiler, but I'll click the box to be on the safe side.Mr. Finney...DAMMNIT, Mr. Dix plays crazy well, I'll give him that, campy, hammy, but well and as I said, almost funny. I fully enjoyed him. I find it sad that almost every war movie made up until the 1960s seemed to find a need for a love story. Blech! This one had one and maybe it was needed to help show his transformation, but, ah, whatever. I enjoyed it and would never tell anyone not to see it. 'Nuff said.

movingpicturegal Rocky and Nancy, couple in love, when War is declared (WWI, in spite of their early 30s clothing). Rocky (played by Richard Dix) compares soldiers to lemmings "trying to reach a goal that doesn't exist" - Nancy (Elizabeth Allan) thinks her man is "yellow" as she pushes him into going to battle. Next thing you know, Rocky has joined an Aero Squadron and is encamped in a barracks full of nicknamed comrades and a menagerie of "mascots" not limited to a goat, pig, chimp, parrot, and Rocky's personal mascot, a cute little lion cub (actually, he looked sort of like a leopard to me). Rocky starts out fighting his morals against shooting another man - but not for long, it seems, as Rocky gets pretty darn aggressive amazingly quickly - the war has completely gone to his head as Rocky turns into the fighting ace of all aces!This film is a bit hit or miss - parts of it are good, other parts are quite slow-moving and boring. Richard Dix gives a somewhat hammy performance and there are some pretty fake looking kisses between the two leads, a real lack of chemistry there, I would say. BUT - there is some interesting photography in the air battle scenes, and a few other interesting scenes here and there, especially notable is a scene where Dix is confronted by one of the German soldiers he shot down, now on his death bed. Okay film.

brianina First, you have to buy Richard Dix as an upper-crust sculptor and pacifist named "Rocky." Then you have to accept that after one dogfight he turns into a cold-blooded killing machine. There's no middle road with this guy! The aerial combat scenes are well done with an excellent use of miniatures, but they aren't in the same league as the ones in "Wings," "Hell's Angels" or "The Dawn Patrol." The squadron banter has a realistic feel to it unlike any of the other dialogue in the film. There's a particularly bad scene where the heroine is a warfront nurse and the wounded Private Exposition is brought in to fill her in on the story so far. Dix's rapid changes in personality are given no real reason and make hash of his character and anything profound the film is trying to say. Obviously modeled after "Journey's End" and all the other anti-war plays of the time, "Ace Of Aces" ends up making a travesty of both pacifism and soldiering.