To say, as the previous reviewer did, that this film about a tough drill instructor falls short of "Full Metal Jacket" is to state the painfully obvious. Hell, I doubt if it's even as good as Jack Webb's "The DI". Not only is Richard Brooks' directorial pacing as slow as a hypnotized elephant, and Elaine Stewart's limitations as an actress an effective subverter of all her scenes with Richard Widmark, but Millard Kaufman's screenplay, which inexplicably was nominated for an Oscar, (well, maybe not so inexplicably when you consider the aesthetics of the Academy), both fails to set up the key conflicts between Widmark and his GI charges until midway through the film and then too quickly and neatly and happily resolves all of them. The result is a too sanitized, emotionally and dramatically uninvolving movie that, were it not for the usual good work of Widmark and Karl Malden, would be completely unwatchable. Solid C.
PS...Is it just me or is the great black and white, noir-ish cinematographer John Alton not at his best in Ft. Bliss Texas, in color?
PS...Is it just me or is the great black and white, noir-ish cinematographer John Alton not at his best in Ft. Bliss Texas, in color?