One of the most incoherent-scened plot-device war movies I've seen, 1950s era or otherwise. The other reviewer nails it when he refers to continual angry exchanges without apparent cause or resolution. Why does Curtis take the attitude he does and act as he does with the "French" girl ..no cause, but eventual resolution when they make out I guess. How and why the continual futile interpersonal with the sergeant , apart from this continual enigmatic reference to Guadalcanal, likewise, no cause or purpose just keeps breaking out counter-productively with monotonous repetition. Action scene after action scene is preposterous or just puzzling and bizarre in their proposition...the knocking out of the Japanese tank where attacking American soldier is dragged inside the tank ...the strange drawn -out 'we need three bodies' scene in the exposed foxhole ...the whole thing with the booby-trapped Japanese radio-hut which must have been thought up by someone who had been chewing karva-laced beetle-nut. The bizarre perplexing end sequence involving the PT boats at the pier and the shelling Japanese destroyer and Curtis' bizarre frogman grenade attack on....... the wreckage of the PT boat. What the hell is even really being suggested there...he burns up the destroyer..which is hundreds or thousands of metres away btw... by igniting the spilled gasoline from the exploded PT boat???SMH..
Yes, the movie has a couple of things in its favour. Hence my two-star rating. Location and filming is ok, it looks nice , even though Hawaii is probably not fully accurate to the Solomons/Bougainville. We can forgive that. And the one-more strange scene involving the compliant servile Japanese prisoner..and big Melanesian islander with machete guy who is willing to trade his boat for possession of servile grovelling Japanese prisoner guy. This is so way out , and dark as well, that you have to award a star for some more Beetlenut creativity involved in thinking it up. -----
ASIDE :I actually wonder if grovelling Japanese POW guy may have inspired the 'Fuji" character in 1960s war-comedy series "McHale's Navy"?? He even wore an identical type of outfit. -------
ASIDE :I actually wonder if grovelling Japanese POW guy may have inspired the 'Fuji" character in 1960s war-comedy series "McHale's Navy"?? He even wore an identical type of outfit. -------