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Bataan may well be the best. Certainly it's one of the strongest Hollywood salutes to the war effort while World War II was still raging. In his grittiest role to date, Robert Taylor (sans mustache) plays a U.S. Army sergeant fighting a rear-guard action in the Philippine jungle, covering Douglas MacArthur's retreat. His platoon is the usual wartime study in democratic motley: veterans (Lloyd Nolan, Thomas Mitchell, Tom Dugan) thrown together with green recruits (Robert Walker, Barry Nelson), a Latino (Desi Arnaz), a black (Kenneth Spencer), not to mention a couple of stalwart Filipinos (Roque Espiritu, J. Alex Havier), and several officer types (George Murphy, Lee Bowman) with sense enough to defer to the sergeant's judgment. As in John Ford's desert classic The Lost Patrol, the group is whittled down through misadventure, disease, and skirmishes with the ever-advancing Japanese, till only a handful remain for a still-shattering last stand.
Bataan was made at MGM, and the principal setting, a jungle clearing overlooking a strategic bridge, stinks of the soundstage. In other respects, however, Garnett manages to introduce shocking, un-Metro-like realism into the proceedings. In an early scene of bombardment, a GI, blinded, crawls out of the wreckage of a field hospital only to have a smoking roofbeam crush his bandaged skull. There's nothing cosmetic about the wounds in this movie; they hurt and they bleed, and people get them during the most gruesome hand-to-hand combat in any '40s war movie. --Richard T. Jameson
| ACTORS: | Robert Taylor, George Murphy, Lloyd Nolan |
| CATEGORY: | DVD |
| DIRECTOR: | Tay Garnett |
| THEATRICAL RELEASE DATE: | 03 June, 1943 |
| MANUFACTURER: | Warner Studios |
| MPAA RATING: | NR (Not Rated) |
| FEATURES: | Black & White |
| TYPE: | Feature Film-action/Adventure |
| MEDIA: | DVD |
| # OF MEDIA: | 1 |
| UPC: | 012569505629 |
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Customer Reviews of Bataan
War as it should be portrayed (by the propagandists) Bataan is one of those films that any fan of WWII films cannot miss. Although it was made after the Allies had started their comeback, the impact of the film is not diminished. The effect of Pearl Harbor was still an open wound. The portrayal of the Japanese as cold-blooded sub-human killers is chilling. As a rallying point for the campaign in the Pacific, it's perfect. Robert Taylor, well-known by this time as a handsome and suave leading man, steps out of his image to play a tough, cynical and thoroughly American hero. The final scene of this film says alot about the American attitude at the time, and about Americans as a national entity. This is a really cool war movie.
One Of The Best War Films
Bataan has to be one of the best war films I have ever seen. Robert Taylor is the sergeant leading a small group of men in the Philippines trying to hold off the Japanese by destroying a bridge that the Japanese keep rebuilding over and over. There's a sense of doom as you watch the film, since there is no way this motley crew of men can hold of the Japanese forever, and it does take on an "And Then There Were None" quality as the men fall one by one throughout the story. But the fighting is tough, brutal, and realistic, and all of the actors play their roles with conviction, with particular praise going to Taylor and Robert Walker. I would highly recommend this film to fans of war and action movies.
Average War Film
Pretty good. Fairly forgotten 60 years later. Cliched and macho but interesting as indicative of typical wartime propaganda. A platoon of soldiers must make a last stand to allow others to escape. Almost no effort is made to explain what is actually going on in terms of the larger picture and why they are being called upon to make this sacrifice. These men are just "doing their duty". They are,of course, whittled down to the last man. Worth a viewing.