Flying Leathernecks

This overlong but action-filled WW II film offers John Wayne in a familiar role as Maj. Dan Kirby, the martinet commander of a fighter squadron on Guadalcanal in 1942, a man whose rigid discipline gets the job done but alienates the pilots flying under his orders. Capt. Carl Griffin (Robert Ryan), his easygoing, poetry-reciting second-in-command, thinks Kirby is a fine officer and leader of men but begins to criticize his uncompromising ways, believing that a freer hand should be taken with the men--that they should, as flying specialists who risk their lives more openly and frequently than the average infantryman, receive special consideration. Of course, this is ...