Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #617 in VHS
• Released on: 1994-06-22
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Formats: Black & White, Closed-captioned, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 122 minutes

Customer Reviews

Great for WWII Buffs!!
It you are interested in World War II history you will like this film. But you will love it if you are a Robert Taylor or Eleanor Parker fan. They are both great in it. It was one of RT's best performances. (it doesn't hurt the picture that Taylor and Parker were supposedly romantically involved while making it) It deals with the plan to bomb Japan at the end of WWII. It takes you through the behind the scenes operations and finally you are there in the plane as the bomb is dropped on Hiroshima. Real footage is blended into the movie. Taylor plays Paul Tibbets who piloted the plane that carried the bomb and Parker plays his wife. Even though some liberties are taken regarding Paul Tibbet's personal life you probably won't mind as this makes the picture interesting. The supporting cast is great. You will want to watch it again and again.

A stunning movie
Though I could have seen this movie as a 10 year old when it first came out, I didn't, and was even unaware of its existence. But by chance I caught it yesterday on a cable movie channel. I was stunned by its power. The final scenes of Hiroshima on fire were especially powerful. (Even though I knew the Enola Gay didn't actually hang around to observe, I accepted the artistic license, as the scene "felt" right.) Since I grew up in the 1950s, I wasn't troubled by the acting or by the movie being in black and white. And if you want to see scenes involving B-29s, there sure are lots of those here. This movie should be more widely known.

Dramatic portrait!
Paul Tibbets-Enola Gay both names that mean part of the history. This is an absorbing subject, carefully handled about the officer who piloted and drooped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Even I think Taylor wasn't the most appropriate actor for this role, ( I just can think in three names for that moment: Robert Donat, Fredric March and Michael Redgrave) and the film surely would have elevated to a major status.
The only default to my mind is the real nightmare derived from this action; the awful sequels that surrounded the mind and personality of Tibbets are simply absent. There was a very long introduction showing the backgrounds.
A well supporting cast accompanied him. Good point for Melvin Frank.
Two years later after this film was released, the American journalist William Bradford Huie wrote the most documented text about this subject. Try to get this important historic testimony.