ameyer2

I couldn't finish this film and perhaps, for that reason, you should take my review with a grain of salt. But I feel strongly enough about it to write something anyway.

The production values on this film are quite good - cinematography, acting, sets, action scenes, are all well done. The problem is that the story makes no sense and the politics are bizarre, to say the least.

A general gets up from the battlefield. He has survived a massacre by playing dead - a premise that is made less and less credible by his heroic performance later on. He joins a group of bandits, killing some poor prisoner whom he knows nothing about in order to prove his loyalty to the other chieftains. He convinces the bandits to join the Ching army to fight against the Taiping, who are in revolt against the government because they (the bandits) can get food and money that way. They ambush a Taiping supply convoy and then offers a deal to the government army. He will take a city for them from the Taiping if they give him half the spoils. So far, so good. A man with no morals joins the bandits and, with them, becomes a mercenary soldier for a corrupt government. He plans to take a city, sack it, loot it, and keep the profits. It doesn't fit the fairly decent image created for the hero, but at least it's consistent.

But then the film makers try to make this man into a genuine hero. He leads his forces selflessly into battle against Taiping soldiers - portrayed not as the ragtag peasant revolutionaries fighting with farm implements and having a religious motivation, as they actually were, but as a disciplined army with uniforms, officers, and rifles. He prepares to sacrifice his life to fight them.

By great heroics, he wins the battle, ignoring the spear that has thrust all the way through his chest, and takes the city. The spear has magically disappeared and our hero seems unaffected by the wound. Then, amazingly, he orders the execution of two soldiers in his own army for raping women in the city! He says he is serving a higher purpose and will not allow that kind of stuff to ever happen again.

Huh? Where did these scruples come from? He's just massacred an army for no reason other than pay. He's just fought for a corrupt government that is subservient to foreign interests and the interests of the rich landlords in the regions. He has just taken a city and, presumably, sacked it. He leaves the city with chests full of silver coins.

I don't know what the Chinese writers, directors, and censors were thinking when they made this film. One is tempted to conclude that, however coherent the story might have been when originally written, it was bowdlerized to support the government above all and pretend that supporting the government is a good thing for everyone, even if it's corrupt.

It was hard to take. I couldn't take it. Mao must be rolling over in his grave.

Four American Seabees land on a Pacific island held by a small, bored, left behind Japanese garrison. Their mission is to determine whether an airfield can be built on the island, and then get out and report back. However they run into the Japanese almost immediately and wind up running and fighting for the rest of the film.

The movie fails on many levels.

It is not credible as an action movie. The Americans hide almost effortlessly from the Japanese, who seem listless and lackluster in their pursuit. The Americans' Tommy guns never seem to need reloading. They talk in almost normal voices in spite of nearby Japanese. They almost always spot the Japanese first and hide successfully in places where they should be spotted pretty quickly.

It's just as bad as a character movie. The officer in charge is irascible and arbitrary. The men aren't entirely believable. The Japanese, even though they have small parts, are better presented as people. The single girl in the story, who is completely unbelievable as a native islander, is given a totally predictable and mechanical part.

The plot lurches from action to action, almost as if the writers wrote a scene, the company played it, and then the writers asked themselves, Now what should we do next?

Perhaps, as others have suggested, this was a pilot for a TV series that was never made. It has a few good touches, but they are overwhelmed by the failures.

I saw this many, many years ago under the title "Attack and Retreat". It is about the Italian participation in World War II on the Eastern Front - where Mussolini sent soldiers to die for his own grandiose vision of himself as an equal partner in German conquest.

I'm not able to recall many details, but there are a number of remarkable scenes that stand out in my memory. One was of a young soldier and a Russian girl in a field of high wheat. Quiet bullets whisper through the windblown stalks in deadly counterpoint to the young love of the boy and girl. In another scene Peter Falk, looking very small and lonely in a bleak and forbidding landscape of snow and ice, struggles to get to the rear while artillery rockets streak through the sky behind him. In still another scene, an Italian guard plays the Internationale on his harmonica to show some human solidarity to a group of Russian civilian prisoners. A mocking German guard demands that the prisoners sing, and a singer stands up to sing.

Shot in very striking black and white, it was an effective antiwar and anti-fascist film with powerful visuals and a strong message of humanity.

I liked it very much and wish it were shown more often.