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Memphis Belle

Memphis Belle

List Price: $14.97
Your Price: $9.08
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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A Corny Movie
Review: I found this movie to be full of cliches and concocted action. The crew behaved as if this was their first mission instead of their 25th. The documentary by William Wyler is just as exciting, a lot more accurate, and a better bargain as a film.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent Video
Review: This video was excellent. If you like action this video is perfect. It is insirational and exciting. It is about a B-17 in WW2 that makes it's last flight and then returns home.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Talking about action, this movie is great!
Review: This movie was great! It had a tremendous story and enough action to keep you on the edge of the edge of your seat. This is interesting, here's a new way to use this movie. Watch this movie, build a model of the B-17 then go to an airshow and a airplane museum. There are list of airshows and airplane museums on the search engines. This movie contains a great amount of historical information and by using the above formula, you and your kids can learn about aviation, history and everything involved in model building.

C. Jeff Dyrek

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Save Your Money...........
Review: ...........and buy "Twelve O'Clock High"! While it was nice to see the status of many of the surviving Fortresses, the film's credibility was far too suspect to recommend it. I mean Wyler's own documentary of the Belle's last mission (actually a bit of a "Milk Run") is both more relevant - and, despite its blatantly clear emphasis on war time propoganda, far more accurate. I suspect that many bomber crew members winced quite a bit when Modine decides to repeat the bomb run - and in so doing run the risk of incurring still more casualties -so as to avoid bombing a nearby school!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Poor Movie
Review: When I first watched this movie I thought it was great. Afterwards I researched the story and came to find out the movie is a blatant lie! The movie is pure fiction compared to the truth of the Memphis Bell. Once again Hollywood theatrics takes a fascinating true story and so twist it as to destort reality.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Good, Entertaining Film
Review: Memphis Belle is a good, entertaining film. Perfect for a rainy Saturday afternoon, or just about any ol' time. Phooey on those who pick it apart for factual inaccuracies ! ... . It's just a movie - enjoy it! If you want real life - take flying lessons and fly your own missions.

So get yer popcorn and soda and settle in for a nice ride.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An investment in memory
Review: In the half century since the conclusion of World War II, the stresses and mythology have been lost from our collective memory. We now know how truly ineffective 'area bombing' was in bringing the war to an end. Hollywood, ignoring statistics, taught us to revere combat men [sorry ladies, the real war was fought by males] as superheroes. The 'John Waynes' of this film type set a pattern not yet cast aside. Memphis Belle is one attempt to displace the view of impossible heroics with a more restrained experience of combat. It's a low-key presentation of the contrasting personalities fitting into the intense roles combat imposes on them. Other critics may decry the 'Hollywood clichés' inherent in making any war film, but the reality is that given a certain level of luck, only certain combinations of crews made it through the intensity of aerial combat.

Flying combat is a special circumstance in war. The combatants are detached from the grubby ground conflict until the opposing sides contact. The three dimensional arena where no hiding place can be sought was well presenting in this film. A bombing squadron is much like a besieged city, open to attack from all sides. Memphis Belle portrays pretty well, given the producers had but three operational aircraft to present the condition. It may be, as is written elsewhere on this page, that the actual Belle remains in sacrosanct condition. To portray a single, unblemished, aircraft as typical of WWII air combat would be misleading. The historical inaccuracy over one aircraft may be overlooked in presenting a clearer picture of what the bombers experienced. If you need one, another inaccuracy exists: a Bf109 did cut a B-17 nearly in two. But that was in Libya, and the bomber survived!

Performances in this film span a wide range. Modine as the pompous, paternalistic pilot seems, in light of his later films, to be less acting and more like playing himself. At first he seems wooden, but given his feeling for perfection: 'Let's make this our best mission yet' reflects the attitude admirably. David Strathairn's a sleeper in this one; if they'd made him the pilot, the film would really have gone Hollywood! Of them all, John Lithgow's support role stands out as a real individual. His 'letter reading' scene with Strathairn points up the whole purpose of the film. Memphis Belle is a good investment in obtaining some small understanding of the tension of the B-17 raids. They were trying to do a job during what we were all led to believe was 'a great crusade'.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The best movie that I have ever seen!
Review: This was the best movie I have ever seen in my life!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The most Historically Inaccurate movie I've ever seen
Review: This Movie is the biggest waist of time and money, I've seen it on TV and Video, both times I was greatly disappointed. The only accurate part about this film are the dates. The Memphis Belle was not shot up like Swiss cheese like portrayed in the film. It is safe and sound and in one full piece at Mud Island Memphis, Tennessee. In 25 Combat missions not a scratch, the only time it was seriously damaged was when it was being lifted by a crane in an aircraft boneyard and the tail assembly broke. The Dysfunctional crew with it's petty and stupid differences would never happen in a crew that relies on each other for their lives, the copilot leaving his seat to shoot down a German plane for "glory," give me a break, it's just another great story that Hollywood felt wasn't exciting to tell, this movie is a joke and a disgrace to anyone who served our country. Any history buff will find that Kelly's Hero's has more historical and entertainment value. Save your time and money. Buy something else!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Terrific Depiction of Allied Daylight Bombing Over Germany!
Review: I watched this great movie with wonder at all the restored vintage B-17 bombers used in the filming. When one watches as they take off and land with such dangerous imprecision, it's remarkable to realize how far we've come technologically since those dangerous days of daylight bombing by the Americans (the Brits went at night) and the murderous losses over German skies. All of this as depicted was before we developed the P-51 with its much longer range and its ability to escort the bombers to the target area to fend off Luftwaffe fighters who shot down so many bombers in 1942, 1943, and 1944.

This is a wonderful movie, very accurate, authentic, and quite appealing. Starring Matthew Modine as the Pilot of the fabled "Memphis Belle", the first bomber crew to accomplish its mission tour and be returned to the states (to sell war bonds, among other things), is retells the amazing story of how thousands of kids as depicted here went off to England to fly thousands and thousands of planes through the perilous skies of Europe in a sustained effort to bomb the Third Reich into submission. Off they went, seeking the industrial and urban targets, knowing full well they might as well have had 'bullseyes' painted on their fuselages. The costs of flying the missions in terms of lost people and planes were almost overwhelming to the Allies.

The story is told in all its fullness, and one comes to recognize just how many of these plucky kids leaving the air field would never come back, as the daily losses to German fighters, flak and mishap were atrocious. Yet they went up again the next day and the next and the next, in a dazzling display of uncommon courage, tenacity, and maturity beyond their tender years. This is a poignant and well-told, scripted and acted story brilliantly photographed on location over the hills and dales of bonny olde England, where it all unfolded in its grand yet grisly magnificence fifty some years ago. Watch and remember


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