BACK TO BATAAN (1945)

I seem to going through a WWII movie phase lately, so expect lots of war movie reviews over for the next few weeks. The title of this film, one of John Wayne's earlier war movies, isn't quite accurate. The episodic narrative begins just after the fall of Bataan and focuses on the native Filipino guerilla forces who aided the Allies in retaking the Philippines from the Japanese. Wayne is a colonel in charge of a loose group of Filipino resistance fighters; his chief associate, Anthony Quinn, is the grandson of a legendary Filipino hero (an actual historical figure) who has to deal with hearing his former girlfriend (Fely Franquelli) broadcasting over the radio as a Tokyo Rose-type commentator taunting the Allies. (It turns out that she is actually a double agent, sending out important information to the Allies about Japanese movements.) The central event of the movie is the fall of the small village of Balintawak to the brutal Japanese forces. Beulah Bondi plays a strict but brave schoolteacher from the town who joins Wayne's band; Vladimir Sokoloff is the principal who won't bring down the American flag at the school and, in a very effective scene, is hung by the Japanese in the schoolyard, by the flag rope with the flag draping his dead body. Quinn is captured and winds up in the Bataan death march, though Wayne gets him out and sends him, disguised as a monk, on a mission to Manila. There he meets up with Franquelli and works with her to achieve an ambush against the Japanese during a ceremony at Balintawak celebrating the "liberation" of the Philippines by the Japanese.

The action scenes are fairly well done, though a sentimental side plot about a young student of Bondi's who is tortured and sacrifices himself to save the guerillas doesn't come off too well. The subplot with Franquelli is interesting, and it's the kind of melodramatic sidebar story that would vanish from WWII films in the 50's, when the focus moved away from thriller elements and propaganda concerns and more toward the grittier details of planning and fighting. Lawrence Tierney, who later gained a reputation as a tough noir villain (he's especially effective in BORN TO KILL, reviewed 1/18/04) has a small role as a Navy officer; also in the cast are traditional WWII-era bad guys Richard Loo and Philip Ahn. The movie has a false opening of sorts, about the Allies raiding a prison camp at Luzon (the plotline is not part of the film proper); footage of some of the actual soldiers who were liberated is shown at the beginning and end of the movie, apparently as a way of making it timely. [TCM]