NR | 2h 2m | Biography, Drama, War | 1952
“Above and Beyond” has one of those credit rolls that makes you pause for a second. The names Melvin Frank and Norman Panama show up as directors, screenplay writers, and producers. If you know their backgrounds, your mind will jump straight to Bob Hope and those mid-40s studio comedies they wrote, which is how they built their names.
Then this film starts, and you realize they stepped into one of the heaviest subjects imaginable and played it straight, without any gimmicks. It sounds like a strange pairing on paper, but on screen, it works.
The film spends real time inside the famed B-29 bomber program, following the training, repetition, and long grind tied to a single objective, which is buried under layers of secrecy for most of the running time. Everything points toward one mission—these crews are being prepared for the moment they’ll drop the first atomic bomb.
I liked this biopic not only for its respectful treatment of the subject matter but also for the way it handles the personal side between Lt. Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr. (Robert Taylor) and his wife, Lucy (Eleanor Parker). He’s the pilot who leads the first combat atomic bomb mission.
The secrecy around the Manhattan Project bleeds into every part of his life. He evades answers because he has to, keeps everything locked down, and gradually lets the mission take priority over everything at home.
Lucy is a wife stuck in the dark. She’s trying to make sense of a husband who won’t tell her anything, as she watches him drift further out of reach, one conversation at a time.
Mission Orders and Marriage Troubles
Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets kicks off the story by hurting his own upward military career path. He calls out a commanding officer (Robert Burton) over his crew’s safety concerns and ends up being passed over for promotion.
That moment puts him on the radar of Maj. Gen. Vernon Brent (Larry Keating), who sees value in someone who won’t fold under pressure. Brent pulls him into a tightly sealed assignment and hands him control of Operation Silverplate at Wendover Field in Utah.
The job centers on reworking specially modified B-29 Superfortress bombers to carry a weapon still unknown to most of the men. The entire effort is wrapped in strict secrecy.
Maj. Bill Uanna (James Whitmore) handles security on the base and keeps a close watch on everyone, including Tibbets. Rules come down hard, access gets restricted, and even the men’s families end up moving to Wendover so information stays contained.
Lucy finally joins her husband in Utah, after spending months back in Washington on her own; she hopes things will settle down once they’re in the same place again. Instead, she walks into a base full of strain. The crews don’t fully trust Tibbets, the wives don’t understand the purpose of the training, and the whole operation starts to feel like something nobody can explain.
At home, the cracks start to show. Tibbets keeps everything to himself, and long stretches of absence turn into the norm. The mission keeps moving forward, step by step, while the distance between him and his wife grows. The countdown toward something much larger starts to loom over everything.
The Price for Peace
The first hour of the film may drag a bit for some viewers, as it spends a good amount of time on military protocols and aviation specs. However, the sheer scale of preparing the Enola Gay (the B-29 bomber assigned to drop the atomic bomb) soon pulls viewers in. Highly specialized teams spend an agonizing amount of time verifying every aircraft component to prevent any sort of catastrophic accident.
History lessons usually fall flat without real people caught inside the machinery, and this film understands that. Tibbets and his wife start out deeply in love after long stretches of wartime separation. However, the mandatory silence at Wendover slowly tears their relationship apart. Lucy still cares for her husband, but she reads his cold exterior the wrong way.
One of the harder parts of the film is seeing a commander give up his home life to see a mission through. Early on, Tibbets answers a direct question about sacrificing thousands of lives to save millions. After a brief pause, he accepts that math, while knowing it’ll cost him everything at home.
Modern critics often complain about old military movies being too patriotic. They miss the point of a generation which was still trying to process its own survival. The narrative is a reminder that the bomb was built to end the conflict quickly and prevent millions of additional casualties on both the American and Japanese sides.
By the end of “Above and Beyond,” viewers can reflect on what those decisions actually cost the people making them. It shows the strain of leadership and the toll it takes, but the film closes with a sense that something has been held together.
“Above and Beyond” is available on Apple TV, YouTube, and Google Play.
‘Above and Beyond’
Directors: Melvin Frank, Norman Panama
Starring: Robert Taylor, Eleanor Parker, James Whitmore
Not Rated
Running time: 2 hours, 2 minutes
Release Date: Jan. 2, 1953
Rated: 4 stars out of 5
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