MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

bairdathome Probably the only true war hero in this movie While filming Flight Angels Morris became interested in flying and became a pilot. With war in the wind, he joined the Naval Reserve and became a Navy flier in 1942, leaving his film career behind for the duration of the war. Assigned to the carrier Essex in the Pacific, Morris shot down seven Japanese planes and contributed to the sinking of five ships. He was awarded four Distinguished Flying Crosses and two Air Medals Read his biography. It is better then I can remember. Sadly died at a young age of a heart attack on board a Navy ship in San Francisco bay and was pronounced at near by Navy hospital. Married once before the war and had one child and again married after the war with two children. Buried in the Arlington National Cemetery along with his brother who flew a B-17 in Europe. Thanks for your time. Stay Safe.

atlasmb If you wish to see "Task Force" as a historical account of the U.S. Navy's use of aircraft carriers, the film does a reputable job. Plenty of archival footage is used, so an air of authenticity pervades the battle scenes.The primary character is Jonathan L. Scott (Gary Cooper), a career naval aviator who later commands a flattop in the Pacific theater of WWII, where carriers became an important part of the Navy's campaign. Scott is portrayed as something of a troublemaker, always willing to promote his ideas of naval strategy, regardless of the consequences. He is an ardent spokesman for carriers. This rings true, as there are always men of vision in (every branch of)the military who are ignored and even persecuted for their beliefs--usually by members of Congress and career officers who either wish to feather their own beds or who equate bigger and more powerful as more effective (especially in aircraft design).I do think there are many other actors who could have played the part of Scott with more animation and/or passion. Cooper is most effective when playing characters with little social savvy (e.g. "Sergeant York" or "Friendly Persuasion"). One could argue that Scott might be such a man, but a more effective commander would be a man who had command presence and the ability to inspire. A more passionate relationship between Scott and his wife might also have made the counterpoint of their personal lives more touching.

Robert J. Maxwell Gary Cooper is an admiral retiring from the US Navy. He solemnly closes his suitcase and turns to leave his ship, an aircraft carrier. The officers are at attention as he walks across the deck. He boards the gig and heads for shore. Then his narrative begins: "It doesn't seem like twenty-seven years ago that I first flew an airplane off the Langley --" And so it goes. The voices of Cooper and one or two other principals carry us through a kind of Classic Comics illustration of the development of naval aviation, from the first fragile and clumsy biplanes wheeling around on the flight deck of the USS Langley in the 1920s to an overflight of jet fighters as Cooper and his wife, Jane Wyatt, stand on the pier, staring proudly up at them as they zoom overhead.A familiar structure. It's like Jimmy Stewart growing up with the organization in "The FBI Story," a promo for J. Edgar Hoover, President-for-Life. And it was used by John Ford in "The Wings of Eagles," although there was more robust humor and a lot of distraction was provided by a drunken wife. The role of wife in "Task Force" is less challenging and of no importance whatever. She's there to tell him how proud she is of his successes, to comfort him when he's sad, and to talk common sense to him when he's so frustrated he's ready to quit the Navy. (Usually it's the other way around, with the wife jealous of her husband's being "married to the Navy.") There's a straw man -- a viciously anti-military editor who rails against expensive investments like aircraft carriers, even after the battle of Midway, when everyone down to the lowliest swabby recognized that the war in the Pacific depended on carriers. The guy should leave his brain to the Smithsonian. Julie London in a small role is yummy, with startling eyes and a nose by Praxitiles.The movie gives us a sense of the passage of time. The footage of the Langley in the 20s morphs into the modern carriers of World War II and the shooting changes from black and white to color. There's a good deal of interspersed combat footage, most of it familiar, beginning with Greg Toland's reenactment of the precipitating event in "Pearl Harbor". Flaming airplanes fall apart in the air. A wounded American aviator has his Hellcat torn in half during a crash landing. A stricken carrier sends up a ball of vermilion fire. The same airplane crashes two times, maybe three, with the negative flipped. If I see that same Japanese fighter trailing fire and smoke and skipping along a few dozen feet above the sea before doing a sudden nose dive, I think I'll scream. Forty millimeter guns pound away. Officers sit and sweat out the battles while the score imitates a clock with a Thump thump Thump thump beat.The battles aren't really described in any detail, and the detail that's provided always makes our side look good, which is to be expected. References are made to Midway, the Phillipine Sea, and Okinawa. (Kamikazes at Okinawa caused more casualties among Navy personnel than were suffered by the Army ashore.) One genuinely brave and self-sacrificing aviator is named among all the fictional character, McCluskey, but he isn't given the right role. Wayne Morris, an actor of little discernible talent, plays another aviator. In real life he'd actually put his rear end on the line playing a Naval aviator during the war. The editing is only a little sloppy. An F4F landing suddenly morphs into a TBF, then back again, but that doesn't happen very often, and the canopy of the hopelessly obsolete TBD Devastator is accurately pictured.The whole movie, from beginning to end, amounts to a promotional ad for Naval aviation. Gary Cooper is the central figure but he's only there to guide us along through the progression of things and events, a kind of patient and explanatory Virgil taking us through a specular gray world that sometimes turns hellish.It isn't a bad movie. I always enjoy movies about aviation and the Navy. But, as far as I could tell, there was only a single original touch in the script. Cooper's ship has been torpedoed and his best friend killed on the bridge below, and when Cooper touches the chest-high steel shield to look down at the body, the metal is so hot that he winces and quickly withdraws his hands. It would have been nice if there had been more such delicate and personal touches.

autryld I thought I saw all of Gary Cooper's war movies, but I just caught this one today on TMC. As others have stated, Brennan and Cooper are a great pair and they were a very good pair in this movie. Except for the typical lack of bloody wounds (in forties war movies), it was impressive that the dramatic detail in this movie was more accurate than usual for this genre. The movie did a great job depicting the interaction in the CIC (combat information center) and elsewhere on the ships. However unusual it seemed, transitioning from black and white to color to show plot transition (The Wizard of Oz notwithstanding) was effective for me. Deep down, I think it might have been a way to sneak in color war footage. As I am also a Jane Wyatt (Spock's mother) fan, she was great as Scott's (Gary Cooper's character) wife. Although it did seem to be a bit incongruous that she dressed as well as she did considering her situation. (Sorry, you'll have to see the movie.) Summary: Whether or not you've seen Midway, see Task Force.