\u201cAbove and Beyond\u201d is a dramatic portrayal of the Air Force\u2019s project to deliver the first atomic bomb to be dropped on Japan (Hiroshima).\u00a0 Col. Paul Tibbets, played by Robert Taylor, is selected for the mission because of his combat record and also for his knowledge of the capabilities of the B-29 bomber.\u00a0 The movie has two aspects.\u00a0 It documents the difficulty of the mission to combine the scientific, military and logistical requirements while maintaining absolute secrecy.\u00a0 The second aspect is the toll that this secrecy takes on the marriage and family life of Colonel Tibbets, his wife Lucey and their two young boys.\u00a0 I watched this movie along with Camera Girl and I made sure I emphasized how truly annoying wives are when husbands are trying to get something really important done.\u00a0 Like when I have a really important horror movie that I need to watch and she bothers me with unimportant stuff right in the middle of a very important scene.\u00a0 Very annoying.\u00a0 But I digress.<\/p>\n
Since mission security is one of the crucial aspects of the story they gave the part of security chief, Major Uanna, to James Whitmore whose other credential for atomic energy related movies was his turn as a police officer in \u201cThem,\u201d the story of giant ants created by the original Manhattan Project blast in New Mexico.\u00a0 And the Air Force general overseeing the project was Major General Curtis E. LeMay who is played by Jim Backus, better known to television audiences as Gilligan\u2019s Island\u2019s very own millionaire, Thurston Howell III.<\/p>\n
The melodrama of Col Tibbet\u2019s disrupted family life is reasonably well done.\u00a0 But the payoff is the bombing mission.\u00a0 And it is compelling.\u00a0 The men in the plane other than Tibbets didn\u2019t know about the atomic bomb.\u00a0 Tibbets reveals this during the flight to Japan.\u00a0 And he reveals to them that for all anyone knows their plane will be destroyed by the radiation or the subsequent shock wave.\u00a0 Actual footage of the Hiroshima blast is run during this sequence of the film and the devastating nature of the detonation is conveyed in Tibbets\u2019 reaction to the blast.\u00a0 Even all these years later and in context of our familiarity with the much more powerful hydrogen bombs that were to follow, the sight of the Hiroshima explosion is still a sobering sight.<\/p>\n
I recommend this movie based on its temporal proximity to the events.\u00a0 It gives us a chance to see the transition from the almost na\u00efve mindset of the WW II Americans to the almost overwhelmed perspective of inhabitants of the new atomic age.\u00a0 And it gave me new-found admiration for the courage and determination of my parents\u2019 and grandparents\u2019 generations who combined intelligence and hard work to produce the horrible miracle that became the basis for our modern world.\u00a0 If we still had their clarity, I wonder whether we\u2019d be in the mess we\u2019re in now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cAbove and Beyond\u201d is a dramatic portrayal of the Air Force\u2019s project to deliver the first atomic bomb to be dropped on Japan (Hiroshima).\u00a0 Col.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237],"tags":[3095,3094,1556,43,38,1355,827],"class_list":["post-14715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-atom-bomb","tag-hiroshima","tag-james-whitmore","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-ww-ii"],"yoast_head":"\n