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11 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
Why Not the Real Red Adair Story?, 26 December 2005
6/10
Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York

Sandwiched in between the critical beating John Wayne took for The Green Berets and a bunch of westerns culminating in his Oscar performance for True Grit is this little known film he did about a group of men fighting oil fires, a truly dangerous profession. The Hellfighters has the look and feel of a Wayne family effort with it being produced by Batjac and having in its cast Wayne regulars like Edward Faulkner and Bruce Cabot. I wonder where son Patrick was.

A little over 20 years after Hellfighters came out, the person that Wayne's character was based on, Red Adair came into prominence when he took on the Herculean task of putting out all those oil fires that Saddam Hussein started in Kuwait when he fled that country. Turns out the biggest assignment Adair had was way in his future in 1968.

I'm sure Red Adair must have been flattered all to heck when the biggest box office draw in cinema history was portraying a facsimile of him on the screen. Who knows though maybe Red Adair's real story and real name on the screen might be good entertainment. Might be a great subject for a film now, what with all the new computer generated special effects that could be used.

Though the film is based on Adair's exploits, it is first and foremost a John Wayne film. He's not Red Adair on the screen, it's the Duke that all of us have come to know. Wayne and his cast put together a nice action filled film with a minor subplot about his family life. Vera Miles plays his estranged wife, Katharine Ross his daughter, and Jim Hutton a protégé Wayne is grooming to take over his company.

This was Wayne's third film with Vera Miles and twice before he didn't wind up with her, either in The Searchers or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Third time the charm.

Hellfighters also is an example of Wayne's well known generosity to his fellow players. When he liked you he was the best friend you could have. Jay C. Flippen who plays an oil executive lost a leg to diabetes a year or two before. Wayne gave him that extra pay day by casting him in Hellfighters in a wheelchair. I could cite a lot of other examples of him helping people by doing that in other films.

Hellfighters is an enjoyable two hours of Wayne in modern dress, battling the elements like he did in The High and the Mighty and Island in the Sky instead of bad guys. There is one sequence where he and his crew were battling an oil fire in Venezuela with some rebels shooting at them. Since it's the Duke, you kind of expect him to pick up a rifle and blow them all away.

Though Hellfighters is a good, not a great film, I'd still like to see the real Red Adair story on screen.

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12 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Wayne plays Chance Buckman in the mold or spirit of Red Adair, 22 May 2004
9/10
Author: nealmassey

This is a very entertaining film ... co-staring Jim Hutton, Katherine Ross & Vera Miles. Some of the acting of Hutton & Ross may have been less than one would expect. But the film should be seen keeping mind that this was years before the disaster films of the early seventies like The Poseidon Adventure & The Towering Inferno. It is a fun watch as Buckman's crew travels the world putting out oil well fires while kindling a few fires of their own in the local women. It is fun to watch many of the fire-fighting scenes today and wonder how they pulled this off thirty years ago. It is very John Wayne as can be seen as some of his regulars turn up here, such as Bruce Cabot, Edward Faulkner who were part of his stable. Watch it and enjoy.

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7 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Great realism for it's day., 10 June 2005
9/10
Author: muvphreek from San Jose, CA

Loosely based on the exploits of Red Adair, Hellfighters is a perfect vehicle for John Wayne. The characterizations are a bit overstated, but this was standard for the era, so I allow for that. And who could have picked a more appropriate love interest for the Duke than Vera Miles as a San Francisco Department Store heiress.

I thought Jim Hutton and Katherine Ross made a good offsetting couple to JW & VM and Bruce Cabot, a long-time associate of Wayne's, an excellent comic element.

I think the thing that sold it for me was the reality of the fire scenes which I just marveled at until I saw that Red Adair was a technical adviser on the film. That and the knowledge that Wayne was all for reality as much as possible really made me a watch it anytime fan of this picture.

If one takes into account the decade in which the picture was made, it can be and is, for me at least, a very enjoyable film. I highly recommend it!

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10 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
The Duke battles blazing Texas Tea., 20 September 1999
7/10
Author: yenlo from Auburn, Me

One thing about John Wayne movies are the great first names he always had in them. Singin Sandy, Spig, Taw, John Henry, Cord, Rockwell, Rooster, Wedge. This ones no exception "Chance" Chance Buckman played by Wayne is the CEO of a company that fights fires. Oil well fires that is. Along with a number of character actors in supporting roles who teamed with the Duke in many of his films. The action is plenty and the story entertaining. The women in this movie are there as the faithful ladies whose husbands battle the flaming liquid from the bowels of the earth.

No film had been made about oil well fire fighters so this made it an original. This is one of those movies that would excite a person to the point of saying "That's the life for me. Good pay, travel, good-looking women all the time. A job of never ending excitement'! Don't miss this John Wayne classic. Also don't miss an A&E documentary about the real exploits of Oil Well Fire Fighters.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Scorcher, 25 July 2005
8/10
Author: (gedcarroll) from United Kingdom

OK, so John Wayne made films the way Ford made Model T cars, but I love the Hellfighters. I remember first seeing it when I was in short trousers. The silver heat suits, flames and red vehicles caught my imagination and I decided that I wanted a career in the oil industry. I worked downstream in an oil refinery and helped get the Liverpool Bay oil and gas field development online.

I love the childish punch-ups, the stilted dialogue and cheesy acting. But most of all I like the simple entertainment that I got out of this film the first time I watched it and still do now. Watching this film along with True Grit makes you realise why John Wayne was such a cultural icon.

Don't try analyse it or admire it in a post-modern ironic way. Just sit back relax and enjoy

Note: Red Adair helped with the fire sequences to make it look right, but the story itself is pure fiction

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Diverting and REALISTIC, 14 July 2004
Author: Rochus Wessels from Dortmund, Germany

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

You know all these movies, where you are banging your head against a wall, because nobody seemed to care about realism?

This movie had Red Adair as technical adviser, and it shows.

***MINOR SPOILER***

There is a scene where two explosive charges must be at their (different) destinations exactly at the same time and Buckman's men tell him "We have practised 12 times and finally it worked". His answer is "Practise it 12 times more, and if it works EVERY time, we'll do it." I bet this line is from Red Adair himself.

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7 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
I really liked this movie!, 15 April 2005
7/10
Author: Lynn Grant from Chicago

After the first Gulf War, we heard a steady stream of news reports about workers putting out oil fires in Kuwait. I immediately understood what they were describing, because I had seen Hellfighters, and they were using the same techniques.

I really liked this movie. I thought Chance Buckman was the perfect role for John Wayne's character...his character seemed to match the sort of person who would be doing this for a living. Fighting the fires while getting shot at by guerrilla fighters seemed a big much, until I considered what is going on with people working on the infrastructure in Iraq...not much different.

I've heard the complaint that the special effects are not up to today's standards, but they work for me...they do not interrupt my suspension of disbelief, and they are not distracting like some of todays whiz-bang special effects.

I think this is one of John Wayne's best movies.

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
I love this movie!, 18 June 2005
8/10
Author: bkgmoonstar from United States

My ex-husband was a huge John Wayne fan and had me watch every JW movie over and over. This was my favorite. The acting and script are not the point of watching this movie. The attitudes, clothes(especially the women's), and the sets are Soooo Sixties. My favorite thing is the "window" in the office. If you look closely you can see it isn't a window at all, it is a miniature of a highway(like a miniature railroad), but it is supposed to look like the view out the "window". I'm sure that was state-of-the-art in the late 60's. Katherine Ross is fabulous and wears the best clothes. Jim Hutton is quite handsome. John Wayne acts like....John Wayne. If you're a JW fan you'll recognize most of the cast. Great fun!!!!

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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
One of my favorites from the 1960's, 9 May 2005
9/10
Author: prep2004 from United States

Despite (or maybe because of) the simple plot and even simpler characters, this film remains one of my favorites from the 1960's. John Wayne is utterly believable as both a crusty oil rig firefighter and as a protective father, while Jim Hutton, a fine actor who was lost much too young to liver cancer, is at his supporting-role best as an apprentice firefighter and romantic interest for Wayne's daughter.

At many points this film is more documentary than fiction, a fact that only adds to the film's entertainment value. For example, I wonder how many first-time viewers are aware that oil rig fires are extinguished with dynamite? It's extremely dangerous work, and very interesting to watch.

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6 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
The Original Armageddon!, 14 August 2000
Author: SanDiego from The Beach

Exciting adventure (re-made years later as ARMAGEDDON with Bruce Willis and re-set in outer space) with John Wayne as a successful contractor to oil companies. He's successful because his job is a very dangerous one: Drill into oil fields that are on fire, set explosives into the heart oil field fires, and cause them to lose oxygen. This job description has caused his wife to divorce him. John Wayne's top employee is young hot shot Jim Hutton, who John Wayne sees as someday taking over the company. Jim Hutton and John Wayne's daughter, Katharine Ross, are in love and want to get married, but John Wayne wants nothing of it. He doesn't want his daughter to suffer the same stress his own wife suffered, wondering if her husband would live through another dangerous assignment. Unlike ARMAGEDDON in which we never explore Bruce Willis' marriage we actually get to see John Wayne's wife, Vera Miles and listen to her concerns (the divorce was more than just because he had a dangerous job). The climax of the film centers around a government contract that sends the crew into the middle of a war where aircraft is blowing up oil fields as John Wayne and company are trying to put the fires out. Will John Wayne allow Jim Hutton to marry Katharine Ross? Will John Wayne get back together with Vera Miles? Will John Wayne and Jim Hutton blow themselves up in a fire ball or be blown apart my the aerial attacks? If you loved ARMAGEDDON check out the film that started it all.

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