Let's be realistic.

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Standoffish Direction by the Liberal Ray, Submitting to Howard Hughes and John Wayne's Ultra-Conservative Views for Career Reasons, its assumed. WWII was over, but wait...Here comes the Korean Police Action, or Conflict, or whatever the Hell it was. So Crank Up the Propaganda Machine, pull out as much Color Stock Footage that Hughes could lay His hands on, and have at it.Robert Ryan is given enough Screen Time to at least offer some Humanistic Points, but the Power of the Production and the Script is Weighed Heavily on the Side of Hollywood's Chicken Hawk, John Wayne. In Real Life, The Duke was Never in the Military (although to be fair he did make some effort to enlist, but how sincere and forceful will never be truly known), thus Never Fired a Shot in Uniform, but that didn't stop Him from Shooting Blanks, Strutting around, and Pointing Fingers.The Movie is Filled with Flying Bravado. The inter-cutting of Real Footage and Dramatizations is not as bad as has been reported. It is Good Enough to Pass and surely Amps Up the Film to the Level of Action needed in this type of thing.Overall, Hughes and Wayne accomplished what They wanted and made a Flying Flag Waver. Worth a Watch for the Color, Aerial Scenes, and Robert Ryan Trying to make Sense of a Senseless Thing like Tribal Warfare.

I don't believe I've ever seen so much stock footage interspersed with movie action before, used rather extensively here to provide an added sense of realism to the horrors of war. Some of it rather graphic too as related to men wounded and bleeding while being hauled off the battlefield.In the story, Major Daniel Kirby (John Wayne) is brought in to command the VMF 247 Wildcats stationed in Oahu, a Marine fighter squadron that presumably would have gone to Captain Carl Griffin (Robert Ryan), who for reasons that are revealed later, was passed over for promotion when the former commander was killed in action. Kirby has a battle theory of providing close air support for combat ground troops, an idea not embraced by the top brass because of the potential for friendly fire casualties.Interestingly, most of the tension in the story takes place between Kirby and Griff, who's questioning attitude of the commander's leadership calls upon the viewer to evaluate one's own feelings about the need to follow orders explicitly. Kirby's life and death battle decisions are made on the basis of achieving a greater good rather than attending to the needs of the individual, a concept that gets played out in combat situations a number of times in the story. The idea predictably comes full circle in the latter part of the picture when Griffin is faced with a difficult decision during an air battle that involves his own brother in law."Flying Leathernecks" is pretty much what you'd call a standard John Wayne vehicle in which he kicks a.. and takes names, best described by Robert Ryan's character when he admonishes his superior officer for not winning any friends among the men under his command, but certainly influencing them whether for good or ill. It's the same kind of hard boiled excess Wayne brought to other war films he appeared in, notably 1942's "Flying Tigers" and 1949's "Sands of Iwo Jima".

The dogfights between the Marines and the Japanese in the Solomons in the movie was totally out of balance. John Wayne's squadron is send out to help destroy a Japanese convoy. On the way, they attack some Zeroes and after the dogfight, they proceed to attack the convoy with rockets and bombs.The problem is that you don't attack an opposing fighter force while you are laden down with bombs and rockets. Its is bad enough fighting the Zero without heavy ordnance; however, it would be suicidal to engage the Zero while still carrying all that stuff.Secondly, if Wayne felt that his executive was not up to task, he should have bust him and/or send him back to States. He should have also puts some documentation in the guy's file stating that the guy lack leaderships skills and therefore, should not be consider for any future promotion.On the other hand, you did have some commanders who did make hard decisions; however, they were still won the popularity contest with their men because they still show the gentler side to their men so the guys saw that they were not callous brutes and were not martinets.

My angle on this film echoes some other posters who have a historical take on the film of which the most glaring inaccuracy is F6F Hellcats substituting for F4F Wildcats. The grainy combat footage was irritating and other WW-II films shot during wartime or shortly post wartime have been far more creative and sparing when possible in integrating stock combat footage in tandem with its own filmed footage, but the production simply appeared to not care about continuity in this regard.Not one of the best John Wayne WW-II films but not a complete slouch either, but as other posters noted, is fairly derivative of previous Wayne outings in term of his character in films such as 'Sands of Iwo Jima'.A decent but sluggish Wayne film in comparison to other Pacific theater films, the technical inaccuracies of 'Flying Leathernecks' definitely soured my enjoyment of this film.