Ought to have been a thousand times better than it was. Director William Wellman, creator of Wings, was in the title squadron, and Bill Wellman Jnr portrays his own father, one of a crew of young Americans who for different reasons join up to be called unpleasant names in French and fired at by Germans.
There’s an unusual cast with David Janssen, Clint Eastwood, and Marcel Dalio. There’s quite a lot legitimately humorous wise-guy comedy. There are some excellent “I am the guy, I suffered, I was there” hints, like when a bunch of rookie pilots arrive in their barracks and the narrator sonorously introduces all the sleeping flyers, roughly 80 percent of whom we are told straight away end up dead.
It deals with intriguingly seamy material, as the hero is first abused by his father and then drill instructors, until he hits back, gets thrown in jail, escapes, and ends up the only job he can get as a deserter is soliciting and ferrying brothel patrons, before a chance encounter with an American officer gets him into the US Army Flying Corps, where he becomes an ace and marries his French girlfriend.
Sound fascinating and exciting? Well, it may have been, but it’s a total dramatic flop; too tamed, too toned-down, too cheap, with just one flying fight sequence stitiched up I guess out of recycled material, and Tab Hunter struggling to fit a part that demanded a young Gary Cooper. Wellman might be an amazing filmmaker, but too often was merely a studio hack man; Battleground this ain’t. Shame, really.
