Tonight’s Friday Night Movie is a action drama set in the Second World War. It stars Gregory Peck as General Frank Savage a high achieving officer who is sent to take over an American Airforce base in England. This base is suffering from burnout. Its crews have been undertaking continual missions in daylight to bomb Nazi installations on Mainland Europe. These daylight missions have a high casualty rate and this is affecting moral,e from the lowliest member of the ground staff right up to the base commander.
Savage relieves the original commander of his job and sets about rebuilding the squadron, imposing discipline and improving the skills of the aircrew which he achieves. This film is not just a straight-up action movie, although the flying scenes, some shot during actual combat, are memorable, this film is much more than that.
It’s a drama of personalities and relationships and about conflict and acceptance of danger. It is a film that I’d not seen for many many years but I’m glad I had the chance to re watch it recently.
It’s difficult to write about this film without giving too much away about the plot, but what I will say is watch how the story pans out towards the end, it is an unusual and very humane ending for a war film.
Anyway, here is this week’s Friday Night Movie and I hope people enjoy it as much as I did.
The film is in two separate files Part One and Part Two
‘Twelve O’Clock High’ Part One
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGVnjTMK8BE
‘Twelve O’Clock High’ Part Two
