Ghoulumbe Better than most people think

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

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

secondtake Men in War (1957)Take a small group of survivors in a hardscrabble part of Korea during that neglected war and watch them squabble and worry and scramble to stay alive. This is an admired war movie for the simple reason that it is shorn of romanticism or heroism. Not that there aren't heroic acts, and true intelligence in expert soldiering. But the acting is vivid and honest, not pandering to our need for greatness in ordinary men. And the result is that these ordinary men are great. Robert Ryan is the star here, and he earns his keep. A smart, stubborn, hardened officer who knows the chips are down and isn't going to give in to excess or despair. The dry, open landscape with a few trees and some distant hills is almost a symbol for the movie, plain and unadorned, nothing unnecessary. The other actors are sharply seen, as well, some desperate and losing their grip, others just scared and watching, others subtle and observant. Anthony Mann is best known in the 1950s for his Westerns, and this isn't so far from that kind of landscape and battle to survive. His earlier film noir experience must have also taught him about storytelling and character. This is sharply seen and directed. The Pentagon hated it (because it shows a disorderly military unit, according to Wiki), and wouldn't help in the production, so the only real equipment in use here is a Jeep and some guns. And this helps in the end, since it forces the movie to focus on character and the ensemble acting.

sol- Stranded behind enemy lines, an American lieutenant tries to steer his troops to safety amid scattered sniper attacks in this Korean War movie starring Robert Ryan. The film feels heavily influenced by Sam Fuller (think 'Fixed Bayonets!'; 'The Steel Helmet') with a heavy emphasis on dialogue and the non-combat aspects of war. The movie also bears some similarity to John Ford's 'The Lost Patrol', though it is a decidedly more an episodic affair, with seeming every imaginable wartime horror (at times awkwardly) squeezed in. Episodic as the film may be, it remains a potent experience the whole way through. It is hard say what the film's most powerful scene is: a "sleeping" soldier discovered to be dead, a soldier driven mad after seeing a land mine, a close-up on a soldier's eyeball moving back and forth as he hears a sniper approach him from behind -- it is all very potent stuff. A subplot involving Aldo Ray as a soldier from another outfit obsessed with driving his shell-shocked colonel to the nearest hospital is initially jarring but ultimately blends in well too as we gradually see the genuine affection he has for his mentor, reluctantly forced by Ryan to postpone his quest to drive the sick man to safety. The film additionally benefits from a rousing if seldom used Elmer Berstein score and Ernest Haller's sumptuous black and white photography is very immersive.

deschreiber What a disappointment! How many things were wrong with this movie? The music was completely inappropriate; it was distracting, "classical" and orchestrally inventive, it leapt out from the screen and grabbed your attention rather than being quiet and complementary. Soft moods, such as when soldier finds flowers, were given musical flourishes that were grossly overdone, painfully "romantic," completely out of place for a war movie like this. The plot line had little to offer; the soldiers set off for a distant hill, and along the way one little incident happens, then another, then another; nothing knits them all together or makes them feel organic, they occur as separate little islands, modular as Lego blocks. The dialogue is often awkward ("You didn't shave today."). The tension between the two leading characters is forced and unconvincing. The devotion of Aldo Ray to his officer was not believable, certainly not before the scene in which he confesses his father fixation and not really afterwards.As for the battle scenes, especially near the end, the North Koreans appeared so inept as to be implausible. As the G.I.s sneaked up on them, rather openly really, the North Koreans seemed to have no lookouts, they couldn't hear the clanking of the American equipment, they were caught completely off guard. Part of this sense might be attributed to bad camera work, as it was very difficult for us to gauge exactly how far up the hill the Koreans were from the Americans.The ending - oh no! the American heroes are about to die - but wait! what's that? Oh, my goodness, thank the lord, in the distance we hear American heavy equipment coming to the rescue. O, glory, O glory! Hallelujah!If TCM hadn't presented this as a serious war movie, and comments here at IMDb hadn't been so positive, I would have dismissed this as just another bad B movie. That's all it is. I wouldn't have felt I had to point out its obvious flaws in such detail.

dudedad No director I know made the scenery as much a dramatic player as Mann did. Whether it was the West in the great Westerns he directed or the imaginary Korea of this movie, it seemed as though you were in the scene yourself watching from a tree. The movie is calm, almost contemplative, and even though you could argue the soldiers were stereotypes, they were so believable and so well acted, they seemed part of the scenery as well. The danger in the movie is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and the men die as most men do in war, carelessly, and almost wastefully. The actors are superb, totally believable, and in the case of Robert Keith heart-breaking. I recommend this film to anyone, it's simply the best largely unknown war film ever.