Back to Bataan (1945)

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This was, of course, a sequel to "Bataan:, a much better action war picture than "Back To Bataan", which comes perilously close to 'pot boiler' status. Lots of dialogue and extended treks through dense jungle, but then saved by two very good fire fights. Sequels never are as good as the original, and that's true here - even with John Wayne in charge.This picture contains one of the most far-fetched sequences ever recorded on film, as Anthony Quinn gets permission to leave the tense Philippine jungle fighting to visit his girlfriend in Manila! I almost lowered my rating by a couple of stars, but John Wayne gave the order - who's going to argue with the Duke?6/10 - The IMDb website no longer prints my star rating.

Is it churlish to complain about overt flag waving in war movies? Or to decry propaganda prose in the same? Back to Bataan is guilty as charged, yet such is the composition of Edward Dmytryk's film, and its focus on a part of the war we rarely have seen on film, it matters not.We are in 1942, and after the fall of the Philippines to the Japanese, U.S. Army Col. Joseph Madden (John Wayne) stays behind to lead the local guerrilla resistance against the Japanese army. With that synopsis it isn't hard to figure out what sort of pic we are going to get, yet to purely consider this as a macho beefcake movie is a little unfair.Sure it's bookended by blistering action, as Duke Wayne (very restrained turn actually) and Anthony Quinn cut a swathe through the RKO sound stages, but there's lots of intelligent human interactions here to mark it as being in the least knowing of the campaign.It often grasps for the sentimental branch, while the racist barbs and portrayal of the Japanese does sting at times. But this is exciting and thoughtful stuff, boosted no end by Dmytryk's sturdy direction and Nicholas Musuraca's monochrome photography (a film noir lovers dream pairing!). Better than routine war movie. 7/10

Helmed by one of the ordinary craftsmen, Dmytryk, this movie about the heroic resistance of the Filipino guerrillas poses several times the question of the cynicism: someone accuses the colonel of encouraging ; at the feast of the independence, of the freeing of the Philippines, the guerrilla opens fire notwithstanding there were many kids there. In a way, Dmytryk's movie highlights and foretells the insouciance of the postwar revolutionary guerrillas. It's a colonialist tale about Filipinos having to choose between the Spanish, the Japanese and the Americans, who on the face bring weapons, food and freedom (but Dmytryk hijacks this message, as the Yankees also raise hell and instigate actions which bring catastrophic retaliations).I didn't understand the topography of the itineraries, but the same characters met everywhere (the annoying kid, the gloomy Quinn, the colonel, the starlet …). For a better result, Dmytryk resorts to cards. And sometimes the characters have the look of silent cinema characters.The Church is eagerly lampooned. One has the opportunity to see Quinn in a friar's habit. By the shape of the cloak he wears, he resembles a nun. The prior accepts to make a masquerade out of his confessional. One may admire his wisdom in doing so, but also acknowledge this is a very sharp satire. Dmytryk was subversive, and the slapdash script helps him. A few things are exposed neatly: the colonel doesn't care about the consequences of his encouraging guerrilla fight, and he doesn't hesitate to open fire on a bunch of Filipino kids waving Japanese flags.Wayne was eager to have a military outlook, once he graduated from the B westerns, sports movies and comedies. Here, he leads a guerrilla who mainly stirs mayhem, raises hell and opens fire on a crowd made mostly of Filipino kids. The kid dies, a revenge counseled by the Yankee teacher ends up in many Filipinos being killed, the Yankee colonel triumphs. Dmytryk was mediocre, here at least, or anyway a 2nd league craftsman (there are fans of his crime movies, I for one have found his '50s movies stilted and unappealing), but the movie's eeriness comes from elsewhere: it was made more to stir anger and hate, than to uplift, see the behavior of the Japanese troops, but also the pragmatism of the guerrilla in its will to boost revolution at all costs, regardless of collateral victims (the fact is we end up knowing little about how a guerrilla was organized, etc.). The faces have the uncanny, frightening glitz we know from the propaganda movies. The characters have a funny way of pronouncing guerrilla, as if a cousin of gorilla; and all mispronounce Spanish names.In another war movie, made later, where Wayne was playing a lieutenant on a submarine in the Pacific, he got a better role; here, his delusions of military glamor are subverted by his director. Quinn appears 1st as ailing, then as a prisoner, then as hesitating, then as having found again his happiness with the annoying Filipino vamp.The storyline is discontinuous, with the recurring characters popping up; it lacks sense, _unrequired, though, from a pretext for offering patronizing sermons or for hijacking them.While Wayne is pleased to have the look of a warrior, and Quinn's role seems useless, 'Bataan' is Dmytryk's movie. It's a situation of a craftsman subverting and hijacking both propaganda and the delusions of his actors, and an advice to Filipinos to get rid of all colonialists.The duplicity of this take is intriguing. Dmytryk shows several facts, with all the due coarseness of a propaganda rip-off. The Filipinos have been sacrificed for a guerrilla war meant to weaken the Japanese and to rescue the Yankee prisoners. Like the Greek villagers from a Mitchum vehicle directed by Aldrich, the Filipinos are ready to give their lives for the triumph of the Allies and the defeat of the Axis. The hijacking must of been pretty risking, perhaps the context immediately after the war still allowed for such dares. Dmytryk's guerrilla tale has a coarseness which seemed apposite, given its wholly propagandistic aim; but it's also an almost masterpiece of counter-propaganda, with the militarism and condescension's hijacked by Dmytryk, who uses the occasion to hail the ruthless guerrilla and to proclaim the irrelevance of higher principles, which none takes into account.Dmytryk's shrewdness has been to advance socialist ideas under the guise of the coarsest militarist propaganda: the revolutionary guerrilla, the cynicism, the shots taken at the Church (the Filipinos received the faith from the Spanish, who have been a kind of Japanese of another age, but the burgers and the freedom and _civism from the Yankees). So the script has this ruthlessness, when the colonel acknowledges the waste of the lives of those involved, often unwillingly, in irresponsible paramilitary actions or in their follow-up, as victims of the repression.

This follow-up to 1943s Bataan with Robert Taylor is just as brilliant, if not better, its better because it isn't as long and the dialogue is a little more interesting. John Wayne is again on top form and Anthony Quinn is brilliant.The film is packed full of ear blasting battles, explosions and shootouts and there is a lot of action. Gattling guns, machine guns, springfield rifles, tanks and cannons are heavily used.Like its 1943 counterpart, back to bataan is a disturbing and very harrowing anti-war film, there are scenes were an innocent schoolmaster is lynched on a flag pole when he refuses to fly the enemys flag, and a young schoolboy is brutalized when he refuses to give away the location where the allies are hiding. The storyline is brilliant and very well written and even based on an actual world war 2 incident.Back to bataan is excellent, if you want bucketloads of action and brilliant storyline, its your film. One for war movie and John Wayne fans.