I'm surprised it took me so long to watch this, it was always on Foxtel - maybe the running time. It's beautifully shot, the Irish locations make it seem like World War One Europe, there's some excellent music and plane stuff - I think plane heads love this movie.
The central story is solid drama but it's been mercilessly dragged out to a Roadshow - I mean it's two and a half hours, and has an intermission.
It feels like a sports movie at heart - cocky kid George Peppard wants to be the champ, and doesn't care about anything else really. The film is on Peppard's shoulders and he carries it - he was ideal in these big movies as he proved in The Carpetbaggers and How the West Was Won, especially if he played a bastard.
There is some juicy melodrama with him being promoted by General James Mason and having an affair with Mason's wife Ursula Andress. The ending is very satisfying with Mason sending Peppard to his death. But that all comes in a rush. There's not nearly enough Mason-Andress-Peppard stuff - Mason doesn't appear until over 40 minutes in and there's too little of him.
I think this would have made a fantastic 90 minute movie. As it is it's too long - too many scenes of hitting the same beat ("you're ruthless!").
The Andress scenes are electric - she gets these zooms when she appears. There's some racy scenes with her in bed with Peppard- one where she's topless with a towel draped strategically around her neck and over her chest which must have tested the censor.
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