Top Gun, 1941 style – instead of new recruits Tom Cruise, Anthony Edwards and Val Edwards oversawn by tough-by-heart-of-gold officer Tom Skerrit, we have William Holden, Ray Milland and Chester Morris overseen by Brian Donlevy. There’s also a heavy homoerotic subtext – Holden loves Milland so much that he’s willing to marry Veronica Lake, the hussy set on nabbing Milland and wrecking his air force career and relationship with a feisty photographer. Of course if helps that Holden once loved Lake (until she destroyed him and sent him off to enlist) and Lake is… well, Lake.
The movie is worth seeing today for her, in the role that made her a star. She doesn’t appear for more than half way in but it’s a great entrance – singing in a nightclub under a spotlight. She plays a temptress, but a sympathetic one – she genuinely thinks she falls pregnant to Milland and freaks out. And you feel sorry for her at the end – she has a great death scene.
Constance Moore, the other love interest, isn't as compelling a performer but she plays an unusually strong female character for the time. She's very glamorous, works as a photographer, tells Milland she doesn't want to give up her enjoyable single life unless it's worth it, scolds Milland for his bad treatment of Lake (who he's slept with and then pays off with a cheque).
Because America was at peace, the film relies on air crashes for story excitement: there’s one every thirty minutes or so. The running time is padded out to over two hours with far too much footage of planes landing and taking off (although it must have reassured the US public they had such a big air force). And the ending is ridiculously convoluted - when it looks as though Holden might get back in the air force, Veronica Lake turns up announcing she’s killed someone. She asks Holden to help her, and she winds up hiding in a plane just before it takes off on a bombing run. Then when she’s on board she freaks out and sets off a flare almost crashing the plane. (However silly, it does give rise to an exciting sequence where Brian Donlevy hangs off the bottom of a plane and Holden has to parachute out to save him.)
This movie is a bit of a mess, but has definite historic interest and is a must for Lake fans. It was a massive hit at the time, audiences loving it's mixture of male camraderie, action melodrama and romance - just like Top Gun!
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