BATAAN (1943)

There is no critical consensus on this film; some critics call it the first gritty, realistic portrayal of American action in WWII, while others attack it for its staginess and stereotypes. It's probably fairer to approach it in terms of its cinematic pedigree since it is an unofficial remake of John Ford's classic 30's movie THE LOST PATROL about a small group of soldiers stuck in one location, getting picked off one by one by enemy snipers. In the Ford movie, there are twelve British men facing Arabs in the desert during WWI; here, we have thirteen American men facing Japanese in the jungles of Bataan during WWII. As a remake, it works quite well. The group of soldiers is the usual Hollywood mix of types: a Jew (Thomas Mitchell, who could play almost anything *except* a Jew), a Hispanic (Desi Arnaz), an African-American (Kenneth Spencer, who doesn't get to do much except be quiet and efficient), a naive Midwestern boy who becomes a man (Robert Walker), a grouser with a shady past (Lloyd Nolan), and a commanding officer (Lee Bowman) who gets killed off early so that our hero, handsome, non-ethnic Robert Taylor, can prove himself a leader of men. George Murphy, Barry Nelson and Philip Terry do nice jobs in smaller roles. In fact, except for the rather wooden Taylor and the miscast Mitchell, all of the performances are good, with Arnaz a standout as a jive-talking kid who loves Tommy Dorsey and gets a showy death scene--not once in the movie did I think of Ricky Ricardo. The men's mission is to blow up a bridge to slow the Japanese invaders, then stay behind and keep it secure, which means blowing it up a couple more times, most spectacularly when a mortally wounded Murphy does a kamikaze bit with his plane. Most of their losses are due to snipers, but there is a spectacular scene near the end of hand-to-hand combat, involving swords and bayonets, that is quite graphic for its time. Unlike LOST PATROL, in which the leader survives, here all the men die, with Taylor digging his own grave and firing his machine gun up to his last breath (which we don't see--instead, we get an inspiring message about the big-picture importance of sacrifice, a message which the government probably felt was very important at that low point in the war, but a message which is the polar opposite of the 30's film). The studio look of the jungle and the miniature work involved in some of the bridge scenes are obvious but do not detract from the overall feel of the movie. Recommended, but don't expect "Private Ryan"-type realism. [TCM]