Bataan (1943)

Please don't spend money on this.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

There is no big action in this film. It could easily be a play. It is, however, a great story of 13 heroic men who stood against impossible odds to do their duty. In that sense, it is a good film for Veteran's day. Most of the soldiers in WWII did not do Audie Murphy style heroics, but did their duty and hung in there to aid in the war effort. The efforts here were of extreme importance and the men died with honor.Tough guy Robert Taylor stars, and there is a great performance by Desi Arnaz.The crazy/heroic ending may be trite, but it was good.

Well what can you add to this that others here haven't? It's a Rambo-lite movie, Chuck Norris and/or Sly would have been at home in it. About a dozen US GI's hold off about half the Imperial Japanese Army as it descends on the Phillipines, and as you prob. already know if you knew any history, no one is left standing at the end of the movie.Casting is quite effective-Robert Taylor, Lloyd Nolan, George Murphy, Desi Arnez, etc. All quite good. Robert Walker Jr. has the scared idiot hick role, which is a weak link but prob. acted as written. These guys aren't so much characters as types-look at the names-Matowski, Feingold, a hispanic, black, a phillipino, etc etc. typical of WWII movies. I think they played their parts fairly well.Some of the stuff of course is dated-the hand to hand stuff, while kinda intense and all over the place, gets laughable when you see the Japanese fall over w/out so much as a scratch or barely hit or whatever. (I'm fairly sure that Sam Peckinpah had to have had this in mind when he did 'the Wild Bunch', you know?) On top of it-it's of course set-bound, the exteriors just in a backlot, etc.-but for what it's worth, they do a good job w/ what they had for atmosphere, setting, feeling, mood. Plus watching the bridge get blown up is fun.Check it out if you like WWII flag-wavers, enjoy familiar faces like Thomas Mitchell and Desi, and don't worry too much about it being 'Pvt Ryan' or whatever. It's pretty good.*** outta ****

This is a very good war film with so many excellent performances and wonderful writing. About the only strikes against it were that it tends to occasionally portray stereotypes instead of true people and because the audience knows that regardless what occurs in the film, the US DID lose the Battle of Bataan. First, as far as the characters go, I can easily forgive this. Since the film was made during the war, it was meant to encourage and rally the folks at home, so they made sure to put in some clichéd characters to illustrate certain themes (such as the sweet sailor, the jive-talking Chicano or the proud and hardworking Black soldier). These people weren't played badly, but they just seemed like characters pulled from a formula instead of being real folks. The same thing also occurred in such wartime films as SAHARA and DESTINATION TOKYO. However, despite this, the rest of the characters were very good captivating. As far as losing the battle goes, this can't be changed, but the Americans in the film are practically super-men because they kill off so many Japanese soldiers and make some incredibly lucky shots. Again, this is because the film was intended as positive propaganda, so I can look past this as well.As for the rest of the movie, despite a very simple plot, the film did a very good job of keeping my attention and providing a lot of realism. In particular, I noticed late in the film that the surviving characters were just coated in blood splatters--something you'd almost never see in contemporary films.Excellent acting didn't hurt as well--particularly by Robert Taylor who previously had been seen as more of a "pretty boy" than a rugged actor. Ironically, I saw this just after I saw Taylor in CAMILLE--where he played a pretty, simpering wuss!!! BATAAN was such a welcome change!

This movie dramatizes the U. S. decision to stand fast and defend the Phillipines, a decision which in hindsight may or may not have been the wisest, militarily, given the almost untenable position that the U. S. forces found themselves in when the war broke out, but from a moral standpoint represented the U. S. at its finest. The quality of the movie is not that important; what is important is the story itself, a story of determination and selfless sacrifice in the face of overwhelming odds that hopefully will not be forgotten. Indeed, that China today is an independent state is due to the U. S. decision to confront Japanese expansionism, at a huge cost to the U. S., and to the U. S. Open Door Policy ... but that's the another subject.