Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

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

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

bombersflyup Twelve O'Clock High is a watchable straight forwardly told World War II drama. Its scope is rather narrow, only telling the story of one man and his assignment and not delving into his life and thoughts outside of that assignment.We could of got to know each of the crew a bit or got to know Savage more or perhaps more detail in the actual dropping of the bombs. I respect the film and what it's about, it just didn't do enough for me. There was too much drama and not enough war and all of it surface level.

gavin6942 A hard-as-nails general takes over a bomber unit suffering from low morale and whips them into fighting shape.What do you know about Paul Tibbets? If that name means anything at all to you, it is probably that he dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan. But he also flew air missions over Europe in 1942. This guy was everywhere."Twelve O'Clock High" is considered culturally important, and I would have to agree. If nothing else, it does have the Americans over Europe, which frankly is something few people know about. The story is normally that following Pearl Harbor (December 1941), America declared war on Japan. There was no invasion of Europe until June 1944. But that is not strictly speaking accurate.

Ric-7 I ask myself how I could have improved on this film. I can't think of anything. So I give it a 10.There are perhaps five minutes total of actual combat, and the remaining two hours are devoted to exploring the humanity of the individual fliers. There are no flashbacks to establish characters, no extended reminiscences to furnish a backstory. There is simply the drama of soldiers placed in the immediacy of battle.I saw this film for the first time today. I'd avoided it for decades: another "war" film, one that a TV series was made out of. (Yawn.) Boy, was I wrong.I won't give away anything in the film. I will say look for examples of its amazing humanity in Dean Jagger's performance--the line about trying to remember the faces, and the line about the letters he had to write. But Jagger has no show-stopping soliloquy--just perfect. And then there was the bit about a conversation with a nurse in the hall.And I noticed that the theme and basic plot set-up for this film were exactly the same as Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

Dan1863Sickles I saw this movie on Thanksgiving night after watching CATCHING FIRE at a holiday matinée. And it's really sad how far down movies have gone in the last sixty years. Watch TWELVE O'CLOCK HIGH and compare it to modern movies like the HUNGER GAMES franchise. It's shot in black and white, with minimal special effects. (Indeed the combat footage is actual combat footage.) No poisonous fog or CGI baboons all hopped up on goofballs.This movie starts as a bomber group comes back from a run. They show no blood and guts, but the talk will literally make you sick to your stomach. It's that real, that wrenching. Instead of pretty "tributes" having their faces in the sky they talk about arms and legs being blown off in combat. And your imagination does the rest, if you're old enough to actually form mental pictures based on the tough, honest dialog.So then, the leader of the group begins to crack up. And it's not funny, it's not some weepy teen tantrum either. It's a grown man admitting that he can't cut it anymore. And then Gregory Peck comes in, determined to get the job done no matter what the cost in human lives. Imagine, a fully grown adult male in a leadership position! This movie is about war, and moral choices. But it's also about the nature of fatherhood. Gregory Peck seems to have specialized in exploring this theme, in films as strikingly different as TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, TWELVE O'CLOCK HIGH, and even THE OMEN. In all three films he is the father who has to make the tough choices, torn between protecting his children and forcing them to take on adult responsibilities. 12 O'CLOCK HIGH demonstrates the meaning of "tough love" long before the phrase became cheapened by popular media. Yet 12 O'CLOCK HIGH shows the price of tough love, just as THE OMEN shows what happens when tough love becomes too tough and becomes crazed brutality. (In a sense Damien was a deadbeat just like the boys in the Leper Colony in this film. Sometimes the bad seed cannot be redeemed.)This movie doesn't glorify war, but it does suggest that without role models, such as father figures who demand respect and insist on discipline, children are likely to remain children forever. It's no accident that in a movie like THE HUNGER GAMES or CATCHING FIRE, the adult authority figures are either villains or clowns. Whether it's the drunken Haymitch or the sinister President Snow or the campy Effie Trinket, only caricatures of adults are permitted in modern films. TWELVE O'CLOCK HIGH is the kind of movie they just don't make anymore. Because everyone knows that only teenagers are cool and it's only cool to be an adult if you're trying to stay a teenager forever.