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 Cary Grant is "tough-talking" as the head of an airline in South America in this "two-fisted adventure tale." This one is a "potent combination of humor, romance, and action." 1939, 121 minutes DVD
As a guy who spent most of the 1930s flying the mail to and fro through all manner of tropical storms from his ramshackle airfield at some seedy, banana-infested port of call, I nodded knowingly when one of the characters quoted the Bard's Henry IV saying that "we owe God a death" and that we may as well pay it today so we don't owe anything tomorrow. Every time me or one those crazy-brave flyboys I called my brothers climbed into one of Pop's flying deathtraps he brazenly called a plane, all of us back at Dutchy's bar hoisted one in his honor, hoping he'd make it back in one piece, but steeling ourselves for the possibility that maybe this time Sparks' spit and bailing wire job on old #7 wouldn't be enough to get him through that fogged-in mountain pass. Only Angels Have Wings is so evocative of that time in my life that I could practically smell my old flame Judy's cheap perfume when she unexpectedly sashayed back into my life on the arm of disgraced pilot Bat McPherson.
Cary Grant plays Geoff "Pop" Carter and if you find yourself trying to stifle a giggle when you first see him and he's decked out like some sort of jungle Indiana Jones with his wide brimmed hat, safari clothes, and six shooter strapped to his hip, don't sweat it, because it isn't long before he slaps on his flying leathers and starts looking like the hard driving, risk taking, mail jockey whose hair is just as oiled up as the propeller on #4. Pop is running the local airline and has to frequently remind Dutchy of this whenever Dutchy complains about Pop's gruff, death-defying style. Dutchy actually owns the airline, but leaves the day to day stuff like romancing Jean Arthur to Pop. Besides you think a guy named Dutchy is going to have the stones to send young, hotshot pilots out to their certain deaths just so that some guy in Pago Pago can get his TV Guide on time?
Don't think that Pop is one of those pencil pushers who sits around the office scouring invoices and stewardesses though. He's the guy that's always the first one to test out the new planes, the experimental equipment, and when does he fly a mission himself? When it's too damn dangerous for anyone else! You think he's tough just because of his leather jacket and his nickname? It doesn't matter whether he's flying his plane unconscious after getting conked on the head when his cockpit windshield flies into his face or if he's taking on the final, dramatic flight moments after being shot by his girlfriend. Heck, it was just a shoulder wound. Sure, he's got one bum wing, but that's why God gave you two, right? Besides, he's taking up Les who's also only got one good arm (he broke it during a fight with the pilot called Kid earlier).
Pop's job sounds like one that's tailor made for empty romances with showgirls and the like, but it's recent arrival Bonnie Lee that starts to melt the ice around his heart like one of the head mechanic's welder's torches. With her platinum blonde hair, squeaky voice, and a dogged determination that rivals Pop's, Bonnie is able to get under his skin, despite him being haunted by his ex-girlfriend. You see, his ex, Judy, got so that she couldn't stand not knowing whether every time that Pop went off on his tricky runs through condor country, battling sudden fog banks, whipping winds, and snow storms straight out of Satan's butt itself, if he'd come back. That's no way for a lady to have to live and one day when he did come back and she said she wished that he hadn't because it would easier to take than the not knowing every time, well, it was time to taxi on down that runway and lay in a course for some far away broken down place where dames don't break your heart like it was some drunken pilot's arm in a rum-soaked bar fight.
Pop's always borrowing matches from everyone and he explains that that's just his way. He never lays in supplies or plans for tomorrow, but dang it, the ladies are always trying arrange and schedule everything and that just isn't how he's going to live his life. Maybe, all he has in his life are those rattletrap planes and that swarthy band of skyhawks who'll fly straight into hell for him and maybe the only touch he knows is the caress of that cheap whiskey as it crawls down his throat every time some poor bastard takes off hoping that Tex, the lookout, was right in his judgment that the storm was looking like it was breaking up, but he sure ain't going to be having no lady tying him down. Bonnie understands where Pop is coming from and decides to stay another week to see if their relationship has any future. There proves to be turbulence ahead though.
If Tomorrow Is Forever is that quintessential old movie melodrama full of secret pasts and unfulfilled longing, Only Angels Have Wings is the quintessential action drama. It's all here: the big time stars, the exotic locale (well, it looked like they dressed up a soundstage to look exotic anyway), the hero drowning in manliness whose emotions can only be accessed by the plucky dame who won't quit on him, the tragedy of losing good friends because they're just too damn brave to know when to hang it up, and lots of model airplanes flying around a set that vaguely called to mind Monster Island. Rita Hayworth as Judy seemed to occasionally forget what kind of movie she was in, delivering her lines in a breathless, husky way designed more for some kind of film noir set in a nightclub rather than a movie where Cary Grant stood around the radio room in his bomber jacket demanding to know the weather forecast from Tex. Pop is such a man's man though that he dumps a couple of pitchers of water on her head to sober her up. Normally, I might have a beef that Bonnie Lee vanished for a good portion of the action in the middle of the movie and that the whole thing between Pop and Judy seemed lukewarm, but Pop had so much going on with all the other crises, you can understand if romancing the ladies had to wait until those quieter moments right after some best friend bought it in a crashlanding. The liner notes that come with the DVD even say that it was all inspired by a true story! A testosterone-fueled tale made in simpler times when tough guys in leather named Pop and Kid could love each other, but still want to settle down with a gal.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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