WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

SnoopyStyle For professional pilots, their planes are their island in the sky. Capt. Dooley (John Wayne) pilots his military transport plane. He and his crew are traveling back across the Atlantic. Off the coast of Labrador, icing forces him to land. The survivors struggle in the frozen north as his friends scramble to search for him.The movie tries a few jokey scenes which are too broad and ill-fitting. Around half of the movie is spent on the search party. I would have preferred more John Wayne in a John Wayne movie. As for the crash site, I'm guessing it was filmed up in the Californian mountains. It doesn't look cold or threatening enough other than those scenes where they bring out the wind machine. It would help to see their breath in the air. There should be more tension although the search is fairly compelling. This works for the most part.

Tad Pole . . . to transport four tons of fuel over Mount Everest to the Pacific Front during World War Two, narrators detail during FLYING FOR UNCLE SAM, a background piece on the ISLAND IN THE SKY disc. Since the whole world hated Hitler, the Nazis, and their Axis Hench Armies, 21st Century People have to wonder exactly WHY it took almost SIX YEARS to eradicate this hateful bunch. I think a lot of this delay has to do with the inefficient planning of the Air Transport Command (ATC). How many loads of gasoline do cargo planes deliver nowadays? Not very many, because pipelines, ships, and local oil wells all are much more efficient means of delivery. If enemy submarines threaten shipping, you can use escort destroyers and torpedo planes to establish safe corridors for tankers with far greater capacity and efficiency than a fleet of ATC planes. Better yet, just expand the flexible Trans-Oceanic phone cable tubes to pipe petroleum products to one's advance bases. Or send Army Rangers to siphon what you need from the Evil Doers' fuel dumps. If all else fails, let some Navy SEALS protect a platoon of Fighting Seabees as they set up working oil rigs near the front lines (or just drill as you go along "island hopping"). It would seem that Big Oil was running the Allies' WWII Campaigns with an eye toward wasting as much fuel as possible.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . but there's more than enough sobbing in aviation to make up for the Diamond's lack of tears. John Wayne and his four crewmen seem fairly clueless about this whole flying thing. While on some sort of Mid-Winter jaunt that seems more like a joy ride than a professional mission, Wayne and his sad-sack quartet get so hopelessly lost that the Big Man decides to fly toward the North Pole until he can use up all the gas left in his tanks. (This is about the nuttiest plan I've seen in a flick since Scarlett O'Hara's party guests decided that a Civil War would be a Great Idea in GONE WITH THE WIND.) After Wayne glides to a stop on a frozen lake, he more or less orders his crew to "cry me a river" as his best means of getting home from his ISLAND IN THE SKY. He prods them on with such encouraging statements as, "I'll shoot the first one of you that leaves the camp area." No doubt Wayne's commander has the Wreck of the Essex in mind, as he spoons with each crewman in turn so that he can make an informed shopping choice about bagging some rump roast when the time comes.

JoeytheBrit This is a typically adequate John Wayne mid-50s, mid-career action film which will probably last in the memory for just two reasons: a haunting death scene in the snowy wastelands of Canada, and the sight of Andy Devine in swimming trunks. Thankfully, Speedos weren't around in 1953, but it's still certainly a sight to see.John Wayne plays Captain Dooley, pilot of a transport plane who is forced to land in the vast snowy tundra. To make matters worse, the plane's battery is quickly fading, and bad weather is closing in… This kind of plot is such a bulk-standard commodity of 50s Hollywood that it's to the film's credit that it manages top hold the viewer's attention without ever becoming dull. Perhaps the film's biggest drawback is its use of studio sets that look unconvincing, especially when contrasted with the location shots. John Wayne broods and rages against the elements and hides his anxiety from the usual united-nations crew. A young James Arness plays one of the team of pilots searching for Wayne's downed plane and he looks like a kind of John Wayne-lite. Director Wellman, who would work on another Ernest K. Gann story, The High and the Mighty, with Wayne in 1954, manages to manufacture a reasonable level of suspense despite the failure to generate any life-in-peril sense of desperation amongst the stranded crew.