Basically 'Errol Flynn vs. the Nazis, Round 1' Battleground: GermanyThis experience was hampered for me by a freak situation in which either my flatscreen TV or my blu player, for the first time, didn't have any audio, so, nonplussed yet equally dauntless, I just said 'what the hell', put on the subtitles and watched the film with no audio. (Later, I discovered that I could have just unplugged both for ten minutes and everything would have been normal. You live, you learn. It taught me to pay more attention to what was happening on the screen, so it wasn't an entirely wasted endeavor.)Here, the weakness, as always, was Ronald Reagan, who makes Keanu Reeves look like a great actor. Still, he wasn't bad (it was a war film, after all, with a role he was born to play), and he and Flynn were assisted by great supporting players, such as Raymond Massey and Alan Hale, who are always 'cash money' for me IMHO. As well, you have one of the greatest American directors of the period in Raoul Walsh, so it's basically win, win, win--except if you're a Nazi.

***SPOILERS***Entertaining but utterly mindless allied WW II propaganda movie that has a group of downed allied pilots, American Australian and British, trek their way across hundreds of miles of enemy territory from the German/Polish border to Holland and the English channel with no more then a company of German troops to stop them. This gang of five with two of them Sgt. Llyod Hollis II & Sgt. Kirk Edwards , Ronald Sinclair & Alan Hale, not making it back are lead by Flight Lt. Terry Forbes, Erroll Flynn, who seem for the most part to live charmed lives. They amazingly gets themselves out of one tight squeeze after another with the help of a number of British & American supporting German civilians helping them, putting the lives of themselves and their families on the line, along the way.The task to get these allied fliers into custody falls on the shoulders of German Major Otto Baumeister, Raymond Massey, who at first screwed up by letting them get the best of him and making their escape after Maj. Baumeister's men had initially captured them. The movie then turns into a Willie Coyote Road Runner cartoon with Maj. Baumeister playing the part of the thankless and frustrated Willie Coyote who no matter how hard he tries just can't get his hands on his speedy adversity, the escaped allied fliers, even with the help of the entire German Whermacht and Lufftwaffe.The escaped fliers who include future US President and leader of the Free World Ronald Wilson Reagan, as the wise cracking US fly-boy Johnny Hammond, have a field day in making the Germans look both incompetent and ridicules as they hopelessly bumble their way through the movie in trying to apprehend them. Forbes Hammond & Co. easily make their way to the English Channel, knocking out dozens of Germans on the way, with the only thing stopping them from making it back home is that their car, carjacked from the German Army, ran out of gas.Just when you would think that it's curtains for Lt. Forbes and fly-boy Hammond together with numbers man, or accountant, Jed Forrest, Arthur Kenndey, Lord and behold there's a British Lockeed Hudson bomber materializing right before their eyes as if it were a desert mirage! The Lockeed Hudson happens to be the very plane that the trio were trained to fly and there it is right there for them to hijack and fly back to England! The dastardly and not at all cricket Germans were going to use the Birtish bomber to sneak over the channel and knock out the Battersea Waterworks that, among other things, supply the water for the London Fire Department! Only the scheming and not on the level Nazis would think of something as evil as that being that the waterworks are the reason that kept London from burning down during the German Blitz of 1940/41!Forbes Hammond & Forrest gun down scores of hapless Germans, who have no idea in how to use firearms, together with the luckless Maj. Baumeister as the Lockeed Hudson finally takes off with Jed Forrest getting shot at least a half dozen times and surviving with only a minor flesh wound. On their way home to England Johnny Hammond just couldn't resist, against orders, to drop the bomb destined for the Battersea Waterworks on a German gun battery aimed at Dover England knocking it out of commission. All this happens without a single Lufwaffe plane or German anti-aircraft artillery battery in sight to stop the dynamic trios escape!Within sight of the White Cliffs of Dover and freedom Flight Lt. Forbes radios in that he's looking forward to go to Australia, his home, and get a crack at the "Japs". If the "Japs" are anywhere as helpless and buffoonish as their German allies in the movie "Desperate Journey" it will be nothing more then a walk in the park, and not at all desperate, for Forbes to deal with them.

Okay, so it's a fantasy. Maybe this was one of the first movies of the Indiana Jones or Die Hard variety where the hero surmounts insurmountable odds. More of a comic book than a commentary on real life. But it was made in 1942, when folks needed some encouragement. From some of the historical allusions (the invasion of Normandy not having happened yet but being planned) it was aimed at the hearts of Americans, encouraging them that we could fight and win against the Nazis, and the "Japs", at the same time.There is some great humor and very likable acting. Ironically, Ronald Reagan of all people has some of the best lines. Perhaps he really believed that right makes might no matter the odds, as he said to his 2 buddies as they were about to attack another pack of Nazis who had them outnumbered, "We might as well do it now, there's only 12 of them!" Too bad Americans don't have that kind of confidence in their country against those who would destroy it today and are destroying it themselves with their disloyalty and capitulation. The people of this era knew what evil was, and sought to fight it, rather than sell out to it.At any rate, it's a fun fighting film. A must see for all fans of Erroll Flynn and Ronald Reagan or any WWII adventure fans. Fantasy? Yes. But there are plenty of true life heroes who have been recognized for their valiant fight against tremendous odds, and some are still fighting today. So maybe it's not such a far-flung fantasy at that, for patriots willing to believe and fight.

When the mission begins and the crew is ready to take off, the captain says, "Start port outboard engine" (this would be the left side of the plane farthest away from the fuselage). Yet the camera flips to the inboard starboard side and the engine starts followed by the other engines.The movie is a bit of a feel-good movie but it's also fun. Alan Hale Sr. (father of the "Skipper" on TV series "Gilligan's Island") often plays comic relief (e.g. with Mr. Flynn in "Robin Hood") and he does it well. Lots of quick one-liners you will enjoy.There's a lot of German language without subtitles but the even though I don't know German it doesn't hurt the plot. In fact, the meaning is fairly obvious even if you don't know German and gives a better feel to the idea of being in a foreign country during war.