Big Jim McLain (1952)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Wow! Such a good movie.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It appears most reviewers of the film here treat is as a propaganda piece. Since I'm no fan of Communism I didn't find it as bad as most, though the patriotic approach did get heavy handed at times. What would you expect in a John Wayne flick - he "shot at the other guy because he was an enemy".Infiltrating labor unions and intending to plague the islands of Hawaii with disease infested rats made the Commies a bad bunch in this story. Even so, Big Jim McLain had time enough on his hands to fall for the personal secretary of one of the Commie collaborators, though unknown to either one of them at the time. I don't know how, but Nancy Vallon (Nancy Olson) managed to get better looking as the movie progressed. The Duke must have had that affect on her, especially after he told her that "what I think about you has to be said in the dark".Politics aside, the movie is an average effort and certainly a product of it's times. That doesn't make it a bad one, even as some viewers bemoan Nurse Namaka's (Soo Young) view that Communism is a vast conspiracy to enslave the common man. Sounds over the top, though I don't know of any common men from former Soviet bloc countries who would disagree.

"Big Jim McClain" is distinctive in several ways. First, it features three of the tallest men in the movies. John Wayne (six-feet, four inches), James Arness (six-feet, six inches), and Allan Napier (seven-hundred-and-twenty-two feet). Second, this, along with "The Green Berets", is the most political movie that John Wayne has ever made. It reflects accurately Wayne's view of the Communist Menace. This is the John Wayne who carried a cigarette lighter inscribed "**** Communism." Boy -- are they shifty -- and ruthless too.Allan Napier is the Russky head of the Hawaiian cell. He says something along the lines of, "I hate these domestic communists. These 'committed' party members. But we need them until we take power. Then -- liquidate." This is a staple of spy movies. They sacrifice one another remorselessly for the good of the cause. They're getting in all over too. After a professor takes the fifth, Wayne grumbles, "Now he's free to go back to teaching economics at the university and contaminate more young minds." We never learn about the nature of the contamination. There is a lone reference to Marx and several bitter comments about "the party line" and "all that baloney," but all we ever see of the Red Menace is that they plot to infect everybody by releasing a horde of sick rats in Honolulu. They could be pod people from outer space. They're pure e-vil.Wayne and Arness are members of the House Un-American Activities Committee, sent to Honolulu to uncover these Red moles who have infiltrated the unions. There is also a plot hatched by Napier to unloose all sorts of evil on the islands and halt shipping -- what with strikes and those infected rats. Arness is accidentally killed by the commies, but Wayne and the Hawaiian police capture the evildoers.It's a terrible movie but fascinating too. Never dull. It's hard to generalize about the acting. Some performances are decent, others are ludicrous. Wayne exudes his usual John Wayneness. Arness, who was The Thing in Howard Hawks' "The Thing From Another World," is likably competent as the sidekick. Nancy Olson is beautiful, in an extra-ordinary way. She plays a medical student and she should know how to do it, medicine having been demystified by her physician father. Captain Liu of the HPD cannot act. Neither can a couple of other members of the cast. An elderly Polish refugee is played like a character role in a movie from the early 1930s -- only badly. The lack of talent on display is embarrassing.As if in compensation the movie takes us on a tour of the sights. See the Pali? Notice John and Nancy riding the surf in a catamaran at Waikiki. Aren't the little native girls cute, doing a slow, hip-swinging hula? It's those darned Russkies who cause trouble in paradise.The intent of the flag-waving should reach the most "low-information" of voters. The opening scene has Daniel Webster practically rising from his grave and asking, "Neighbor, how stands the union?" The chief narration is by Wayne, who sometimes seems to shout his apoplectic, angry pronouncements into the microphone. He gets extra points for believing what he says.There's a humorous interlude involving Veda Ann Borg as a good-natured, alcoholic, nymphomaniac who refers to Wayne as "76" because he is 76 inches tall. "Oh ho, manama nui!" It's at once gripping and hilarious to see Wayne try to shepherd her through a dinner at the Royal Hawaiian.It occurred to me, as Wayne's plane is about to land and the stewardess announces that several fancy hotels can be seen on Waikiki through the window -- the Manoa among them -- that when I was a teaching assistant at a semi-exclusive university, I had cause to counsel a student who was agonizing over her low grades in my class. She didn't want to fail because she'd have to leave and attend a state university and it would kill her father. He was the manager of the Moana Hotel. I never could afford to see the inside of the Moana but years earlier I stole an over-sized towel with the Moana logo from its beach front. I squeaked her through, partly out of guilt.All apologies for that digression into the ironic but, really, it wouldn't have been much more helpful if I'd stuck to a discussion of the movie. It is to film what Grandma Moses is to painting.It's an awful movie, but you might enjoy it. I know I did.

While Big Jim McLaine was made during the early Red Scare years of the Fifties, it still would have been a good action movie without the topical headlines that helped promote it. The villains could have been gangsters or hoodlums and nobody would have taken the position that maybe these people were just misunderstood. Granted, John Wayne may have been outspoken in his politics, but his movies were popular because of the image he projected. The men that went to see his movies may not have been as big or strong as he was but would have liked to have been. The John Wayne image was classic Hollywood wish fulfillment. Just as the Joan Crawford or Bette Davis image was for a lot of women. In those days, you picked your hero or heroine and stuck by them so regardless of what anybody else said or did, you went to see their movies. These people who delight in revealing what they have heard about your favorite star are doing it out of a sense of meaness. Movies originally were meant to entertain. That's why they ran them in theaters. Those films meant to educate were usually shown in classrooms. How many kids would have shown up at a theater if there was going to be a film about the pioneers crossing the desert and their hardships, but no Indian attacks. No drama, just historical fact. Aside from its topical subject matter, Big Jim McClain still would have drawn a crowd because John Wayne was in it. Like him or not, the guy had to have some sort of charisma to have lasted as long as he did.

I like this movie, but must admit it's rather cheesy. It's not that I disliked the plot of having John Wayne playing an FBI man bent on smashing communism--it certainly is unique and very much like the real life Wayne. No, what makes this movie so campy is James Arness' incredibly silly performance. Unlike Wayne, who seems rather restrained and cerebral in comparison, Arness responds to every commie the same way Mike Tyson responds to Evander Holyfield's ear! He goes nuts and beats the crap out of all of them, so there's not much dialog. He roughly responds to every potential enemy with "you commies make me so mad,..."--then WHAM, BAM, POW!!! Civil liberties aside, it's quite thrilling to watch him in action!