StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

tavm After weeks of taping this off the THIS movie channel, I finally watched Kings Go Forth on my DVR. It's World War II in France as an officer played by Frank Sinatra gets a recruit who's an expert in radio in Tony Curtis. During a weekend pass, Sinatra goes to the country village and meets Natalie Wood who goes on dates with him. After several other passes, he also meets her mother (Leora Dana) and declares love for her. She doesn't reciprocate. I'll just say that a secret is revealed and Curtis later gets involved. For a while, I thought this was a straight through war story with some of the battle scenes in the beginning but then gets more into the romance side before going back to battle again. Concerning the love story, when things go to a head and one smacks the other, I was really riveted and wondered how it would tie with the war story. Unfortunately, after the confrontation about one killing the other, as another battle with the Germans was under way, the TV screen went black with the audio on as moving pictures flashed back and forth with them freezing each time, even during commercial break. As it continued this way through the end, I can't right now say how compelling this drama really was. It was fine before that, though. So on that note, right now I'm giving Kings Go Forth a 6.

skiddoo Does anyone know if the racial story that turned out with no one getting the girl allowed it to be played in the South? Was the fact that Natalie really wasn't part black and was a big name make sure it was shown there? I think viewers today underestimate what it was like then and why they wouldn't want to risk profits by hiring a woman not thought to be totally white for a romantic role with men thought to be totally white. Putting it into the past, as in Show Boat, and far away also made it seem more remote and potentially less threatening. That was then but this is now, sort of thing.For some modern viewers it would have been horrible to see Natalie Wood act dead from drowning, knowing that's how she really died. For a woman who was afraid of water, she got wet a lot in the movies.

writers_reign There are some tasty technical credits on offer here; two fine novelists fashioned the screenplay and versatile veteran Delmer Daves, no slouch as a writer himself, was behind the camera. Southern writer Joe David Brown had three of his novels adapted for the screen beginning with Stars In My Crown and ending with Addie Pray which became Paper Moon with this one in the middle. His fine novel was altered in keeping with the climate of the times yet although the girl survives we are still denied a happy ending.This is one of Sinatra's finest acting jobs and his understated Sam Loggins surpasses the flashier Frankie Machine of The Man With The Golden Arm because he is saddled with the thankless task of portraying basic decency, if not goodness, and not being Jack Lemon, James Stewart or Gary Cooper, all of whom personify the quality before saying a word or doing a thing, Sinatra is obliged to ACT it and makes a first rate fist of it. The Sinatra persona we know is highlighted in the opening sequence; it's 1944 and Sinatra's company are in the South of France marching to a new base camp; Paris has just been liberated and the locals are cheering the arrival of the Americans but one old lady (Maris Isnard) silently offering a drink of wine - probably all she has - is totally ignored and even Sinatra's Lieutenant Sam Loggins passes her by at first but then he pauses, walks back to her and graciously accepts a glass of wine with a smile. They exchange pleasantries then Sinatra leaves and as he does so he gently takes the bottle from her and hands her the glass. Economically the screenplay introduces the second male lead, Sergeant Britt Harris, a replacement radio technician. This is the kind of part that Tony Curtis used to phone in; a brash, arrogant, smarmy,full of himself little s**t; this time around he's rich as well, the spoiled brat who's managed to avoid any dangerous assignments and treats a world war as a glorified night club. In the fullness of time Sinatra meets Monique Blair (Natalie Wood) and is instantly smitten. The following week he meets her mother, Leora Dana, and becomes a regular guest at their large villa on every weekend pass he gets. In nothing flat both mother and daughter are so comfortable with him that they reveal that Monique's father was Black (or, as they used to say in 1958, a Negro). The stage is now set for Curtis to upset the apple cart and he duly obliges when Sinatra foolishly takes Monique into Nice for a night on the town and they stumble into a club where, lo and behold, Curtis turns out to be a dab hand with the trumpet. From then on Sinatra gets less of a look-in than he did previously until the inevitable moment when Curtis informs all concerned that he never had any intention of going through with marriage to Monique on the grounds that he is a bigot but not averse to Black tail. In the novel Monique who had led a sheltered life to say the least - her parents had deliberately moved to France for her birth and Sinatra was the first American she had ever seen - commits suicide and Sam kills Britt but in the movie Sam sees to it that Britt is killed, loses an arm himself and visits Monique for a last farewell before returning to the States; since the death of her mother (for which no explanation is offered) she has taken to running a school for orphans and that's where we leave her. There are two excellent performances from respectively Sinatra and Leora Dana, who was actually some eight years younger than Sinatra and made up to look the forty-something she was meant to be. Curtis is just Curtis, mediocre to fair and Wood is unconvincing as a girl born and raised in France. Jazz buffs are catered for in the nightclub scene where the musos include Red Norvo, Pete Candoli, Mel Lewis and Richie Kamucha but playing the kind of 'modern' jazz more representative of the 1950s - as exemplified by the Chico Hamilton combo in another Curtis movie, The Sweet Smell Of Success - than 1944. On balance a good rather than a great film but more than worth a look.

esteban1747 The plot is easy to follow although some elements are artificially included in it. It does not make any sense to show Monique Blair (Natalie Wood) very much impressed when he met Lieutenant Sam Loggins (Frank Sinatra) for the first time, then without any justification she said that she did not like him as a lover. The reasons given to him by her mother (Leora Dana) were weak. I am sure that if a man loves a woman, he would not pay too much attention to the fact that her father was a black man. Then Monique met Britt Harris (Tony Curtis) for the first time, and here the real love started. Curtis was a shameless person able to seduce any lady because of his beauty and manners. They decided to marry, i.e. she wanted to marry Britt, but he lied until he is discovered by Sam. In that moment, Britt, non logically to me, explained that he had not intention to marry to a lady of black origin. In any case, I agree that the film is watchable, acting is acceptable in all cases, and the happy end is also reasonable.