User reviews

Unlike a number of those who have reviewed this film, I have never read John Hersey's novel. (Indeed, I only knew Hersey as the author of "Hiroshima" and did not realise that he was also a novelist). I caught it by chance because it was on television when I took a day off work last week, and decided to watch because it was a Steve McQueen film I had not seen before or even heard of. (McQueen is one of my favourite actors).

The use of black-and-white film in the cinema survived for rather longer in Britain than it did in America, largely because colour television did not arrive in Britain until the end of the sixties, several years after it came to America. I have heard it suggested that "The War Lover" was made in black-and-white to allow the filmmakers to insert actual newsreel footage rather than recreating aerial dogfights as was done in a number of later films. The use of monochrome, however, is also a clue to the filmmakers' intentions. Even in Britain it would have been unusual for an action-adventure film to be made in black-and-white in the early sixties, and "The War Lover", although it is set against the background of the World War Two Allied bombing campaign against Germany, is not really an action picture along the lines of, say, "The Guns of Navarone" or "Where Eagles Dare". The aerial combat scenes, even if they are genuine, are less thrilling than those in later films such as "The Battle of Britain" or "Memphis Belle", or even an earlier one such as "The Dambusters". "The War Lover" is really a character study, a human drama of the sort for which the British cinema was still routinely using black-and-white at this period.

Although the film was made in Britain by a British director, it is about the US Army Air Force rather than the RAF and the two leading roles are played by American actors. McQueen plays bomber pilot Captain Buzz Rickson, the "War Lover" of the title. Rickson is a brilliant pilot but is regarded with suspicion by his superiors because of his arrogant, insubordinate attitude. On one raid against the German submarine base at Kiel he blatantly disregards orders to abandon the mission because of bad weather, leads the aircraft under his command through a gap in the clouds, and succeeds in hitting the target. The men under his command, especially his co-pilot Lieutenant Ed Bolland, have mixed feelings about him.

Bolland, played by Robert Wagner, is the other main character in the drama. Unlike Rickson, he is the conformist, by-the-book, type of officer. He has an idealistic belief in the rightness of the Allied cause, which means that he hates war but loves what he is fighting for. He suspects, however, that Rickson is indifferent to the cause he is fighting for but comes dangerously close to loving war for its own sake. Nevertheless, he chooses to carry on flying with Rickson, whose flying skills he admires, even giving up the chance of promotion when he is offered command of his own plane. (To complicate matters still further, both men are in love with the same girl, Daphne). The difference between the two men's characters is best summed up by the exchange between them when Rickson accuses Bolland of being afraid to die. Bolland admits that he is, but counters that Rickson is afraid to live.

What gives this film its force is not so much the changing fortunes of war but rather the changing dynamics of the triangular relationship between Rickson, Bolland and Daphne. Daphne is played by the lovely Shirley Anne Field, who was one of the rising stars of the British cinema in the late fifties and early sixties but seemed to fade away later. Perhaps this was because the British cinema itself seemed to be fading away in the seventies, and because she never really adapted to Hollywood. Incidentally, her cut-glass accent, which one reviewer took exception to, would have been historically correct for an upper-class young woman in the forties. (I was also interested to see a young Michael Crawford as an American flyer). McQueen is particularly good as Rickson, one of his few unsympathetic roles but also one of his best. (In later films McQueen generally managed to keep the audience's sympathy, even when his character was on the wrong side of the law, as in "The Thomas Crown Affair"). McQueen receives good support from Wagner and Field, and while "The War Lover" may not be a particularly gripping war adventure (except perhaps for its tragic climax), it is certainly gripping when seen as a human drama. 7/10

Steve McQueen plays a really screwed up bomber pilot, Buzz. Unlike most of these guys, Buzz LIKES that there's a war and finds the whole thing exciting and even fun! This doesn't bother his men during much of the film...he's very, very good at what he does and seems to lead a charmed existence. However, as the film progresses, it becomes obvious to several of the men that he really is a sociopath....a loner who likes to destroy things and has contempt for women. Nothing seems to get to him at all...until his last mission.

In contrast, there's his co-pilot, Bo (Robert Wagner). As the film progresses, the two have a falling out and in many ways, they are different. However, he's no angel either when it comes to women. Handsome and likable, like Buzz, he's a bit of a user. But he does not love war and can't wait to go home.

This film did a great job of fooling the viewer. According to IMDb, there were only three B-17s used in the film...and they made it seem like a lot more. Additionally, MOST of the aerial sequences are pretty good and the stock footage they used was better than normal in most cases (though the stuff later in the film wasn't nearly as good). There were only two serious problems I noticed (and I am a stickler for these details) were scenes where a plane exploded, as they were obviously just cheap models and could have been done better. There also was a BRIEF clip of a supposedly German fighter plane attacking at 94 minutes into the film...and it's actually an American P-38.

In many ways, the film is an interesting portrait of the folks who flew the missions. I am pretty sure a reasonable number must have been like Bo and Buzz...and such attitudes must have proved helpful in war...and certainly NOT during peace time! Not a great film like "12 O'Clock High" (probably the best film about WWII bombers) but very good nevertheless.

War is a wrenching experience. Whether experienced in far off foreign lands on the battlefield or at home in the living room gathered around the radio to hear the latest news, those who experience it are often moved to put their physical and emotional experiences down on paper. Later, others are moved to attempt to turn those writings into motion pictures. The process just doesn't always work perfectly. More often than not the emotions that can be expressed beautifully in words by an excellent writer like John Hersey just cannot be caught on screen.

It is really hard to define exactly what kept "The War Lover" from becoming a first rate film. The production effort was definitely first rate, and the casting was excellent. The framework of this move is all there. It is well filmed, well acted, well directed and well produced. Even the use of the black and white format works. It not only allowed the use of actual combat air footage, but also provided a gritty quality that fits the material nicely. The adaptation of the dialog is good. It may just be that the emotions which Mr. Hersey put into his novel just can't be translated onto the screen, no matter who tries to do it.

I like this movie despite its shortcomings. I occasionally watch it when a nostalgia for the "bad old, good old days" of WW II gets hold of me, usually on a dreary winter evening when it gets dark around 4:30 in the afternoon, and I enjoy it. Watch this one for the realism of its depiction of the air war over Europe from 1942 to 1945.

Aviation author Martin Caiden (his books were the basis for the film "Marooned" and the t.v show "The Six Million Dollar Man") published a book entitled "Everything But The Flak" that detailed the efforts to revive three Navy PB-1 Flying Forts and the ensuing flight adventure of moving them across the Atlantic to England for the making of "The War Lover" which is a "must read" for those interested in the making of this film. He accompanied the flight crews and although his larger-than-life account of their hijinks (rumbling with Soviets in the airport in Greenland, being locked up by Interpol in Portugal on suspicion of smuggling illicit warplanes - after all these three B-17s had active gun turrets) must be taken with a grain of salt, the guy sure could spin a great yarn! The book is probably WAY out of print but is well worth seeking out as it gives some idea of the difficulty of reactivating three WW II bombers years before the warbird revival got underway. Unfortunately, due to import/export duties in England in the early 1960s, Columbia Pictures scrapped two of the three Fortresses after filming was completed and only one has survived, used for promotion of the film before being passed onto other hands.

The movie itself has lots of B-17 action of the planes taxiing around the airfield prior to mission take-off that is frequently edited out for television broadcast to save time for commercials or to fit into a specific airtime envelope. If it airs uncut, notice the patchy paint on the Fortress noses as three airframes portray a much larger squadron, with nose art changed several times.

Mark Sublette, Falls Church, Virginia

In the great Oscar winning best picture Patton, Karl Malden as Omar Bradley explains the difference between himself and George C. Scott. Malden is a professional soldier trained to do a job, whereas Scott just lives for the action because he loves it. That's what Steve McQueen is as a hotshot bomber pilot who has a crew of Karl Maldens who just want to do a job and get home alive.

Oddly enough a year after The War Lover came out Steve McQueen would play another hotshot pilot in The Great Escape. A pilot who's been grounded and temporarily enjoying enemy hospitality. I wonder how the two McQueens from The War Lover and The Great Escape might have viewed each other.

McQueen's co-pilot Robert Wagner dislikes McQueen's living on the edge style though he knows this guy has the skill to back up his brag and has done so. But things could be going further south in their relationship as McQueen makes a play for proper British woman Shirley Anne Field whom Wagner likes as well.

It's an interesting role that McQueen has and he pulls it off. He's not a nice person, but you can't help rooting for him. Especially in that last close run thing he attempts at the close of the film.

The War Lover is a good war picture and will satisfy the fans of Steve McQueen who are still legion in this world.

"The War Lover" isn't the greatest movie ever made, but it has some very good elements. The scenes of airmen inside B-17 bombers are excellent, with very good views of flight uniforms, equipment, flying instruments and the cramped conditions. The fearful aspects of aerial combat are also shown quite effectively. Some of the sound effects are muffled, but the general experience of flying on bombing missions over enemy territory is well portrayed.

Steve McQueen gives an excellent performance. While his character "Buzz" Rickson is often arrogant and amoral, McQueen is mesmerizing. He also nicely shows how Rickson has moments of compassion towards others. Its good to see a character like Rickson depicted in a way that's not completely black-and-white. Robert Wagner does a very good job as McQueen's co-pilot, a man with more decency and quiet character than Rickson, but who is also flawed like all of us. Unfortunately, while Shirley Anne Field is beautiful and shows some charm, she does a poor job of acting.

"The War Lover" is especially good at showing the toll of war, and how men of various characters and backgrounds are thrown together in the military. And it is very frank about the sexual promiscuity that is often a part of war. While the movie effectively shows these things, it does so in ways that are not as explicit as many movies of today might do.

The editing of "The War Lover" is quite poor at times, with a choppy quality, and minor characters sometimes pop up here and there in a confusing way. Overall, though, the film is very worthwhile for viewers who are interested in character studies and war movies.

Although this is one of my McQueen favorites, the movie itself is flawed.

The film does not stand on its own merit. Rather it assumes the viewer has read the original novel, by John Hersey, upon which it was based. Since many of the important aspects of the book are assumed, the film contains gaps and jerks in its sequencing and total focus.

However, if you like period pieces, the uniforms and flight gear are terrific. And except for one really bad special effects sequence (anyone who saw this movie knows I'm talking about the burning parachute which looks like what it is- a burning handkerchief) the aerial sequences, both war footage and interior close up action shots, are detailed and believable.

McQueen clearly captures the character of Buzz Rickson ( Buzz Marrow in the book), an A#1, narcissistic SOB. A great line is: "I risk the crew's life every time I take them off the ground, don't I...sir?" The pause between "don't I" and "sir" tells the whole story. This guy deftly walks the line between being totally professional and totally insubordinate.

All in all, a great flick.

Once they arm his B-17 "The Body" with bombs they become Buzz Rickson's (Steve McQueen) and he will allow no abuse to come to them until he reaches target even if it involves disobeying orders. Rickson is a war lover, emotionally dead on the ground, unless competing for his co-pilot's (Robert Wagner) girlfriend, but it is in the air over enemy targets is where he finds his real ecstasy. Arrogant, fearless, cynical, courageous, his crew knows he's short a full deck but it is the fearlessness that they bank on to get them back home.

As in any film it appears (12 OClock High, Catch 22) the B-17 is the star, making its way through the flak in imposing formation, the crew in the chaotic interior trying to jell as they fight off German Messerschmitts. Using actual footage War Lover in the air is an intense watch especially with Rickson at the controls. On the ground things tend to get dull with Wagner and a dull Sally Ann Field playing out a mawkish romance to perhaps distract from the well cast McQueen's psycho hero. But it is McQueen's Rickson and his battered B-17 that give The War Lover the thrust that it has.

Philip Leacock's "The War Lover" puts as much emphasis on the 'lover' as it does on the 'war'. Robert Wagner and Steve McQueen are American bombers stationed in England during World War Two. Wagner falls for local girl Shirley Anne Field while McQueen is more in love with killing. This was an early lead performance from McQueen and he certainly displays charisma. Wagner, on the other hand, is his usual eager-to-please self and, although he's the good guy, comes across as a bit too serious and far too smug. Again Shirley Anne Field is wasted in a bland, under-written role while the film's main strength lies in Bob Huke's first-rate black and white photography. Look out for a young Michael Crawford in a small part.

I haven't read the John Hersey novel others praise. (I've always liked Hersey's reporting and writing - just missed this one). So I can judge only the movie.

Steve McQueen gives a truly wonderful performance as the sort of guy you want to punch - arrogant, self-absorbed, cruel, conceited. (Of course in life, we read the same of him!). Robert Wagner also gives a wonderful performance - how not to appear a loser when the cruel arrogant one always wins. Shirley Anne Field is absolutely lovely in a very upper class/dreamgirl sort of way.

The movie is quite romantic - you really believe in Wagner-Field as a couple. There is warmth and lust and trust and realism between the two. The movie gives the flavor of love in wartime almost as well as Yanks.

I quite liked the movie- but it seems too short - let us have more of these characters' interactions. They ARE interesting characters at an interesting and dangerous time. I suppose if they'd have taken more from Hersey's novel, it would have felt a more substantial meal.

Nice action piece, with some nice period detail of what it was probably like being a US bomber pilot in the US in the war. While not the movie mainly focuses on the the relationship between the three main characters, it also focuses on Buzz's character, a vaguely psychotic bomber pilot.

Motivations and the lives on the bomber crew are shown, I quite liked the setting and the portrayal of these guys. The relationship between Buss, Boland and Daphne is a tad clichéd...and really seems to be one of those war movies that are spoiled because it was felt there was a need to fit a romance into it.

Lots of great footage of bombers, including some amazing footage of a bomber landing on its belly with no undercarriage, and some low level stunt stuff that has to be played with a good sound system. However some of the effects are a tad dodgy, and all the Luftwaffe fighter footage is obvious grainy stock footage..shame that they went to the trouble to use real US bombers, but couldn't get hold of a few Messercshmidts!

A valuable record of rising star Steve McQueen in his youthful prime surrounded by a solid production and under the sensitive stewardship of recently returned British director Philip Leacock.

Unnervingly well-cast as an "insubordinate and irresponsible" and utterly self-centred American pilot stationed in Britain; McQueen draws upon the same seemingly limitless reserves of glamour and self-confidence that in reality got him to the top only to then stall.

Fairly entertaining and gripping movie about those lives in that era. In the history of movies about war or the west, drama and relationships are often included. I prefer that action be the focus. If you like the relationship drama, they're plenty here. Certainly 1990's Memphis Belle came from this movie; too many coincidences between the two stories.

For whatever reason, this film had slipped pass me and I was viewing this movie for the first time. And I have to say that I was very entertained by most of the scenes, especially the ones involving Steve McQueen and his not-so-normal view about war. It was a pleasant surprised as I got caught up in the story and followed the players right to the end of the film. In fact, the relationships with the flying crew were so well done, that I was somewhat disappointed when they threw in a female love interest taking the story into an even more irrational mind-set of our main player, Buzz Rickson.

A written summary of this movie will not do the film justice. A person really has to view the production in order to see the development of characters and the quirky plot that is laid out with its slight references to the line between sane and insanity. Steve McQueen gives an excellent performance as the viewer is caught up in the action of the B-17 crew leader that has a fondness for this horrible situation called war. One cannot wait until the next air- raid to see how character is going to react to the crisis and also to each other.

At times, the movie did get a bit slow but overall an entertaining watch. A movie that most people will not be disappoint in viewing.

Interesting war movie, based around a B-17 pilot (Steve McQueen) and co-pilot (Robert Wagner) and their bombing missions over Germany in WW2. Reasonably predictable, but the action sequences are great, utilising WW2 footage plus footage filmed especially for the movie.

When the old-fashioned melodrama «The War Lover» premiered in 1962 it did not impress anyone. The protagonist Buzz Rickson (a convincing unpleasant performance by Steve McQueen), a psychopathic American pilot, haughty and pedantic, hardly aroused sympathy among mass audiences, other than military and civilian population who might have shared with him his obsession with war, macho supremacy or boastful bragging. This aspect of Rickson only finds objection and disgust in Daphne Caldwell (Shirley Anne Field), a pacifist British girl who defends opposite values , which she expresses in her dialogues with Ed Bolland (Robert Wagner), Rickson's co-pilot. The script unfortunately reduces Daphne to a "war girl" that falls in love with Bolland, who just wants to have a good time, unlike Rickson, who is obsessed with her, but keeps a distance. I am amazed when I see these war films that exalt death, without taking a moment to think that, almost as a rule, every war usually responds to economic interests, concealed by political motives. I feel they are almost horror movies, preparing us for the death of the characters in a sinister conflagration. Similarly, they bother me even more when I know that they are propaganda vehicles that sell the image of an army - in this case, foreign and distant from the events that motivate the war - and overlooks the real drama of local human beings who have to endure so much tragedy. Richard Addinsell provides such a pompous score to «The War Lover» that it makes you think you are watching a major historical event. But no. It is a romantic-war melodrama, with a mad soldier leading the events and making propaganda for his army, in those days when that institution was intervening in the genocidal war of Vietnam and when England was producing the progressive "free cinema", to which this film is completely alien. Avoid.

World War II has always been a treasure trove of some of the finest moments of heroism known to Hollywood. For this offering, tinsel town selected a novel by John Hersey and made a movie called, "The War Lover." The late Steve McQueen, was very proud of his role as Capt. Rickson, during the filming. Added to that was the cast and crew from his co-star Robert Wagner as Lt. Ed Bolland, to the supporting actors, Gary Cockrell as Lt. Marty Lynch, Michael Crawford as Sgt. Junior Sailen and multi-talented Robert Easton as Sgt. Handown enhance this fine war time saga. The well written story about the war, it's effects on the characters and their ability to cope with it is what makes this movie a classic. Occasionally some pearls of wisdom are uttered which makes one think, such as the phase spoken by the Flight Surgeon Randall (Bernard Braden) who said, "I consider war to be a complete cession of rational thought." That is true, not to mention memorable. Like the tale itself which zeros in on the men, their loves and their own mortality. All in all, a worthy Classic from the Greatest generation. ****

This is easily one of Steve McQueen's worst pictures and it's a pretty lousy World War II picture. McQueen almost turned down The Great Ecape because of this and his picture picture Hell Is For Heroes were both World War II films and both flops. Hell Is For Heroes was a much better film directed by Don Siegel and McQueen's character are basically the same in those two. It's easy to see why this film did so bad and but not so with Hell Is For Heroes. There isn't much plot here except that McQueen is a rebel and always has to disobey orders and Robert Wagner plays his co-pilot and friend who wants to play by the rules. There is a girl played by Shirley Anne Field who Wagner likes but it's a pretty bad movie and you shouldn't watch it.

Even in 1962 The War Lover is a movie that was made too late. Take off some of the more cynical edge, and this is would have fit perfectly in the post-war era or even wartime. Its dramas, characters and sensibilities feel a bit dated even in the sixties. Steve McQueen plays the titular role of a cocky, bold tiebreaking pilot (is there any other in Hollywood?) who might like his job a little too much. However, like most of these war set melodramas the fighting sequences come at the predictable intervals to underline or highlight whatever is going on in the main storyline-in this case a love triangle.