Written by Robert Pirosh, the same man who brought audiences Battleground and Go for Broke! during WWII, A Gathering of Eagles was supposed to be an homage to Twelve O'Clock High. While I hated that 1949 drama and found it incredibly boring, this 1963 film wasn't really any better. Rock Hudson stars as a hard-nosed commander at a new Air Force base that failed to pass its previous inspection by head honcho Kevin McCarthy. While everyone knows Rock can play a convincing jerk, in my opinion he doesn't play a convincing soldier despite his WWII service in the Navy. He doesn't come across as having enormous self-discipline, a quality needed for this role and others like Ice Station Zebra.
As Rock gets meaner and meaner, his wife Mary Peach and his friend Rod Taylor pull away from him. They complain he's too cold and doesn't see the humanity within the soldiers. Since Rock is trying to get the base to prepare for the worst-case scenario (pressing the red button and signaling a dozen planes to fly all over the world and drop bombs), I think it's fair that he's cold and doesn't allow mistakes among his men. When the time comes, if a man reports for duty hungover and drops his bomb on the wrong town, his commanding officer shouldn't say, "Gee whiz, everybody's human." Since I didn't agree with the main message of the movie, and the rest of the movie was incredibly boring, I can't really recommend this one unless you liked Gregory Peck's earlier movie.
As Rock gets meaner and meaner, his wife Mary Peach and his friend Rod Taylor pull away from him. They complain he's too cold and doesn't see the humanity within the soldiers. Since Rock is trying to get the base to prepare for the worst-case scenario (pressing the red button and signaling a dozen planes to fly all over the world and drop bombs), I think it's fair that he's cold and doesn't allow mistakes among his men. When the time comes, if a man reports for duty hungover and drops his bomb on the wrong town, his commanding officer shouldn't say, "Gee whiz, everybody's human." Since I didn't agree with the main message of the movie, and the rest of the movie was incredibly boring, I can't really recommend this one unless you liked Gregory Peck's earlier movie.