This surprisingly effective tuppence-halfpenny war movie made quite a splash when it first came out and is often remembered fondly. It was made very close in time to the events it depicts and its cross-section of ordinary Joes fighting for their country obviously hit home with a national audience. There is a fresh, immediate feel to it. Lamar Trotti's script is a bit prosaic in that literate, high-toned style of his and it has an appalling narration read by Reed Hadley in the tones of a depressed speak-your-weight machine, (you pray that a sniper's bullet takes him out).
The director, Lewis Seiler, couldn't shape the material in any dramatic sense, (like history, it's one damn thing after another; it soon wears you down), but the battle scenes look authentic and there is one classic scene where an entire patrol is wiped out on a beach with only Anthony Quinn surviving by swimming into the ocean. Terrence Malick covered the same events in his own distinctive, poetic style in "The Thin Red Line" but that is about the only comparison you can make between the two films.
The director, Lewis Seiler, couldn't shape the material in any dramatic sense, (like history, it's one damn thing after another; it soon wears you down), but the battle scenes look authentic and there is one classic scene where an entire patrol is wiped out on a beach with only Anthony Quinn surviving by swimming into the ocean. Terrence Malick covered the same events in his own distinctive, poetic style in "The Thin Red Line" but that is about the only comparison you can make between the two films.