 | |
List Price: $19.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 5100
Released: June 5, 2007 |
| Our Price: $5.78 |
| Used Price: $8.00 |
|
MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
|
| Features:
Black & White Full Screen NTSC Subtitled | |
Editorial Review:
World War II drama that shows the battles - on and off the field - that a general must fight in order to win the war. General Casey of the US Forces in England must fight congressional representatives and his own chain of command to be allowed to complete an important mission. He must get his men's planes out, during a small window of fair weather, in order to prevent the Germans from making more military jet planes. Although the general knows the success of his plan could decide whether the Germans get the upper hand in the war, it could also mean suicide for his men. Adapted from the William Wister Haines stage hit.
Description of Command Decision:
Command Decision (1949) takes on the kind of questions that Hollywood could never have raised during the war--questions about the cruel responsibilities of command, including the responsibility to spend a great many lives to save thousands more in the future. In 1943, from an American airbase in the English countryside, a campaign of daylight bombardment is being waged against aircraft factories in Germany. For much of the way to their targets and back, the bombers are bereft of fighter escort and at the mercy of the Luftwaffe. The mortality rate is shocking--but perhaps, for reasons that are not widely known, necessary. Clark Gable (himself an air war veteran) plays the commandant who has to call the next day's target, and the film never leaves command HQ; the closest we get to combat is a scene of an untrained crewman trying to land a crippled plane. Command Decision is earnest but outshone by the similarly focused Twelve O'Clock High. The main problem is that it's based on--and essentially remains--a play, static in setting and schematic in its arguments. Still, those arguments should be heard. --Richard T. Jameson
Command Decision Reviews:
Great Film for Military History Buffs 
2009-02-03 - This is a great movie about Command of a military unit in time of war. It highlights the difficult decisions a commander has to make. It is well acted and should be viewed by all current military commanders and those who wish to command.
Disappointed 
2008-12-14 - I have always liked this movie for its intensity and historic value. The acting is first-rate. It is an excellent study on the heavy responsibility of command. Unfortunately this version has several minutes cut out of it. I saw it recently on Turner Classic Movies and those minutes were included in their version.
Command Decision
2008-09-16 - One of the earliest attempts to show the politics and terrible strain on a leader's conscience as America debates the effectiveness of daylight bombing. Great dialogue, made more intense by Clark Gable, Walter Pidgeon, and Brian Donleavy. Not much in the way of plane shots.....I suggest Twelve O'Clock High for more of that, and we do not see the leaders crack as they do in Twelve O'Clock High. Not much in the way of extras.
Superb
2007-12-28 - Gable's best postwar effort. Gripping war film with superb supporting cast.
Neal Robertson
similar to 12 o'Clock High
2007-10-20 - Good movie if you like the older post WWII movies, especially if you liked 12 O'Clock high. Clark Gable is very good in this one.
