It had scenes from 100 movies, but the acting and the music...along with the human drama conveyed...made it one of my all-time favorite movies. It is riveting in spite of its flaws.
Not knocking you, to each their own. I remember going to the theater and seeing it in I believe they called it Sensaround. No doubt it was full of great actors, but it was far from their best performances. One thing that I caught the first time I saw it was Henry Fonda telling Hal Holbrook, "I miss the flat lands." As he went on about his childhood home and a lake you could wade across during the rainy season. Nimitz grew up in Fredericksburg TX, in the Hill Country, it's not the flat lands and you don't wade across anything there during the rainy season. I enjoyed the actual flying and fighting part of the movie, but the rest was terrible.