cricket30 Review of Beyond the Line of Duty

Beyond the Line of Duty (1942)

One of the U.S. Presidents from the 1900s . . .

[7/10 · 6 February 2020]

. . . was famous for excusing his close friends from his regular bomber crew, then bailing out on the replacement guys (who were never heard from again) over the Pacific, before alleging a flimsy justification for this whole debacle wasting taxpayer dollars and--more importantly--setting back the war effort against Japan. Since this escape artist's dad was a major war profiteer (raking in huge WWII profits from BOTH SIDES!), naturally Sonny was able to launch a political career based upon his controversial hero's button. BEYOND THE LINE OF DUTY drives home the point that ACTUAL heroes (in this case, one from the malingering miscreant's own state) do NOT look, sound or behave like Hollywood "stars." REAL Men of Valor tend to be short, boring, bland and wooden in their speech. They're as incapable of showing the verbal emotion of BEYOND THE LINE OF DUTY's armchair narrator as they would be unable to snitch and rat out all of their best buddies, comrades and band of brothers to HUAC Witch Hunters. With these TRUE Heroes, it's a case of "Just the facts," as in "My tail gunner got shot in the head, my ball turret guy got crippled and one of the side gunners got a hand blown off--but the OTHER side gunner was all that we needed to beat the Enemy." There's no malarkey here about scuttling a perfectly fine airship after telling your friends on the crew to sleep in, all for the sake of launching a bogus Family Political "Dynasty."