The movie opens on
Guadalcanal. We get footage of shore
bombardment and I recognize the bunker from “Sands of Iwo Jima”. Suddenly we are inland. The Japanese are in caves. The cocky Lt. Brady (Ray Danton – yes, thee
Ray Danton!) offers to take the caves.
His attitude is: “The war is the
key to the city. We make it here, we
make it back home.” There is a frontal
attack with grenades and a satchel charge, but a counterattack puts them on the
run and only three survive. One panics
and the Lt. shoots him and tells Sgt. Sloan (Kerwin Matthews) to lie about
it. Sloan goes along, but vows revenge. Brady and Sloan are promoted and sent to New
Zealand. Brady goes to see the dead
guy’s wife and based on the music and their eyes, something is going to develop
here. She invites him back. Slut!
She has a hot kid sister who is dating – you guessed it. Sloan is working on the plans for
Tarawa. Brady leads a raid on an island
to check out the pillboxes that are similar to Tarawa. Sloan is along. Does Brady want him dead? They take the pillboxes with no problem, but
some tanks arrive and Sloan leaves Brady behind. Brady makes it back and confronts Sloan with
a pistol, but then he’s interrupted by the director waving the script. The invasion of Tarawa has some good footage
that includes the sea wall and amphtracs.
Surprisingly, Brady fights bravely.
Sloan is in command of a unit on the flank. Sloan encounters Brady in a bunker, but he
has cracked up. They are stuck
together. Brady makes a suicide attack
and is killed. Before he dies he
says: “It’s men like me that win wars.” Suddenly the battle is over. Sloan:
“Maybe it’s guys like him that win wars, maybe they start ‘em.”
The
movie has an interesting plot. It is
unclear whether Brady is evil. Was he
wrong to attack the caves and to shoot Campbell when he was going to run
away? The movie is low budget and the
actors are B-list, but the acting is not as bad as you would expect from a movie
like this. The combat is unrealistic,
but the film makes pretty good use of archival footage. It could have looked more authentic, except
that the Marines refused to cooperate due to the plot. It goes without saying that the romantic
subplot is ridiculous, but it is dropped quickly. Overall, the movie is average. It is a shame no one has made a good movie
about Tarawa and it’s not likely to happen any time soon. And yet we have four movies on Stalingrad.
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