The Hunters (1958)

Directed by Dick Powell. Starring Robert Mitchum, May Britt, Lee Phillips, Robert Wagner, Richard Egan, John Gabriel, Stacy Harris, Larry Thor, Victor Sen Yung.

Move over Val Kilmer; Mitchum was jet pilot “Iceman” a full year before you were even born. He’s a WWII veteran aviator now commanding a squadron of pilots in Korea, including the clichéd discipline-starved hothead (Wagner) and the hard-drinking husband (Phillips) of a woman (Britt) he’s fallen for. The standard macho dressings-down in the barracks and the trite romantic melodrama elsewhere combine to make this war programmer a lumpy patch of entertainment. Mitchum is reliable, Wagner teases his characterization with superficial beatnik touches, and Britt’s Scandinavian accent is thicker than the clouds in which the enemy so easily hides. Aerial scenes are pretty good, at least, marred only by a few all-too-obvious instances of in-studio rear-projection trickery. Powell’s fifth and final venture behind the camera, one of the tragic (speculated) cancer victims involved in the 1955 The Conqueror shoot.

57/100