Customer Reviews

Above & Beyond [VHS]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It you are interested in World War II history you will like this film. But you will love it if you are a Robert Taylor or Eleanor Parker fan. They are both great in it. It was one of RT's best performances. (it doesn't hurt the picture that Taylor and Parker were supposedly romantically involved while making it) It deals with the plan to bomb Japan at the end of WWII. It takes you through the behind the scenes operations and finally you are there in the plane as the bomb is dropped on Hiroshima. Real footage is blended into the movie. Taylor plays Paul Tibbets who piloted the plane that carried the bomb and Parker plays his wife. Even though some liberties are taken regarding Paul Tibbet's personal life you probably won't mind as this makes the picture interesting. The supporting cast is great. You will want to watch it again and again.

Though I could have seen this movie as a 10 year old when it first came out, I didn't, and was even unaware of its existence. But by chance I caught it yesterday on a cable movie channel. I was stunned by its power. The final scenes of Hiroshima on fire were especially powerful. (Even though I knew the Enola Gay didn't actually hang around to observe, I accepted the artistic license, as the scene "felt" right.) Since I grew up in the 1950s, I wasn't troubled by the acting or by the movie being in black and white. And if you want to see scenes involving B-29s, there sure are lots of those here. This movie should be more widely known.

WITHOUT A DOUBT ONE OF THE GREATEST MOVIES EVER MADE. ROBERT TAYLOR IS GREAT AS COL PAUL W TIBBETTS, ELEANOR PARKER IS GREAT AS HIS WIFE LUCY BUT THE REAL SLEEPER IS JAMES WHITMORE AS MAJ BILL UWANNA, THE SECURITY OFFICER FOR OPERATION SILVERPLATE. MEANT EVEN MORE TO ME AS I WAS ABLE TO MEET GEN TIBBETTS 3 TIMES IN LATER YEARS.

Above and Beyond is a movie that documents the history behind the development of the 504th composite bomber wing that dropped the A-bombs on Japan. It is a docu-drama. Definitely a plus for history buffs. Not much there for chick flick fans. It was made close enough to the war to have some real interesting insights into the secrecy of the bomb project including the training of the crews in Silver Plate.
Leo Philbin

ABOVE AND BEYOND is a quasi-documentary true life account of the role that Colonel Paul Tibbets played as the pilot of the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. From start to finish, the focus is squarely on the pressures placed on Tibbets (Robert Taylor) and on his wife (Eleanor Parker) who must endure many months of separation from him, all the while with her never knowing his true objective. Taylor plays Tibbets as a basically decent sort who has to confront early on that it will be his finger that will drop a bomb killing tens of thousands of Japanese men, women, and children. There is a key scene when Tibbets' commanding officer gives him a button to push and tells him that if he pushes it, more than one hundred thousand will perish. Tibbets responds by pushing it. This sets the tone of the movie. Tibbets has to be hard on himself so that the war may end sooner. He understands a brutal paradox of war--that for thousands of his people to live, an equal number of the enemy must die. His wife, of course, does not have the luxury of knowing what he knows and her reaction of resentment is eminently understandable. ABOVE AND BEYOND is not a plot driven film. It is no more than a straightforward recording of the pressures faced by one good man who knows that some sacrifices must be made to win a war. And this is the problem with movies like this. Tibbets and his wife are essentially static characters with no room for growth. Taylor shows emotion by growing surly. His wife becomes stressed out. Yet the war itself seems little more than a backdrop against which one family plays out a series of squabbles. The tragedy of war films in general is that such squabbles are often an inevitable result of the much greater carnage occurring discretely offscreen.

Paul Tibbets-Enola Gay both names that mean part of the history. This is an absorbing subject, carefully handled about the officer who piloted and drooped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Even I think Taylor wasn't the most appropriate actor for this role, ( I just can think in three names for that moment: Robert Donat, Fredric March and Michael Redgrave) and the film surely would have elevated to a major status.
The only default to my mind is the real nightmare derived from this action; the awful sequels that surrounded the mind and personality of Tibbets are simply absent. There was a very long introduction showing the backgrounds.
A well supporting cast accompanied him. Good point for Melvin Frank.
Two years later after this film was released, the American journalist William Bradford Huie wrote the most documented text about this subject. Try to get this important historic testimony.

There are three movies that I consider essential in anyone's WWII pacific theater collection (Well actually, there are probably more but I consider these part of the Pearl Harbor Trilogy):

@ TORA, TORA, TORA

@ MIDWAY

@ ABOVE & BEYOND

The latter tells the story of the development of the atomic bomb for use against the Japanese to end WWII and all the hush hush surrounding it.
Called "OPERATION: SILVERPLATE", Lt. Col Paul Tibbits, played excellently by Robert Taylor, did whatever he had to do to keep this top secret operation just that, TOP SECRET, even from his beloved wife, played brilliantly by Elanor Parker, who, despite being left out in the cold by her husband, who was forced to shut her out of the nation's biggest secret, tries valiantly to keep her family together.
This movie is definitely among my favorites of all time, it's got just about everything in it....Drama, laughs, suspense, this movie will keep you entertained for two hours and two minutes right up till the end and I recommend this movie to any WWII fans.

Above and Beyond shows the personal and professional sacrifices that Colonel Paul Tibbets had to go through while leading up to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. This is splendidly accomplished in this movie. Robert Taylor does a fine job as the colonel who cannot reveal his secret training to his wife which causes tensions to rise between them. Duty rises above family in this case and even though it does there is always questioning about how terrible war is.These questions are presented throughout the movie. A very dramatic and moving scene is the actual bombing of Hiroshima and the various reactions of the crew members to the carnage the have inflicted. There are no words just expressions which indicate what a terrible deed they did but in the context of a World War also the necessity of what they did. Robert Taylor later utters a laconic "God" at witnessing what the crew has done and the power, destruction, suffering and death they have caused.The ambiguity and dichotomy of that moment is later perfectly captured when he gives an official report saying "results good" and then somberly and reflectively repeats those words while pensively and mournfully watching the city burn to a crisp. A very powerful moment in an excellent movie.

Lt. Col. Paul W. Tibbets 509th Composite Group CO (Robert Taylor). Must make the decision and alone. He must buck the tendency to placate previous commanding generals and family including wife Lucey (Eleanor Parker.) Can he do it? Could you? We must seek our souls together.

We have to watch each and every supposed detail. It may not be accurate but it is watchable. By the way every occasionally the bomb shows up.

Warning this can be a tearjerker for people that are prone toward domestic bliss.
Black and white film made less than a decade after the event.

Look closely as Gen. Curtis E. LeMay is played by Jim Backus.

Them! ~ James Whitmore

I wouldn't have bought this movie for myself, but got it for my Dad's 75th birthday. Dad had fond memories of it from seeing it on the big screen in 1952.

It seems to me that the movie was designed (maybe inadvertently) to appeal to men AND women. The primary emphasis is how Tibbetts' job of getting a squadron ready to drop the first atomic bombs affected his marriage. That looks pretty dumb in print, but it's true.

Much is made of how long the Tibbetts were separated during the war and how the stress of Paul's job and the need for secrecy (even where his wife was concerned) almost caused their marriage to fail.

The acting is typical for the era: melodramatic. This aspect of old movies probably turns off more people than black and white does. The characters don't seem real. I don't think anyone talked that way even in World War II.

The only actor who seemed the least bit natural was the infant playing the Tibbetts youngest son.

This last bit is minor compared to my major gripes, but no other reviewer mentioned it so here goes:

After the bomb has exploded the crew of the Enola Gay use binoculars in the cockpit to see fires burning on the ground in Hiroshima. This would have been impossible as the bomber was speeding AWAY from the city.