They Were Expendable (1945)

I've seen this twice and enjoyed it immensely both times. The lack of action does not hinder the quality of this war movie in any way. Rather THEY WERE EXPENDABLE depicts a gamut of emotions that make battle scenes unnecessary. Robert Montgomery, John Wayne, and Donna Reed are masterful in their portrayals of naval officers and nurse. One of my favorite sentimental scenes is the dinner for nurse, Sandy. Reed and Wayne's facial expressions were standouts. Of course, the last scene as the plane flies into the sunset leaving a host of hopeless personnel on the field, is very touching as is the dying officer in Corregidor's tunnel.An able cast of supporting actors, headed by Ward Bond, contribute much to the film. It is the largest role I ever saw for Jack Pennick who was "Doc". Pennick, an actual veteran of several wars plus, certainly was at home in uniform.We all remember that President Kennedy served and was injured while serving on a PT boat and that story is on film. PT boats gave up their torpedoes late in the war as mostly very small targets remained and they assumed rather a a gunboat function.Not your typical war movie but a great one, and it ranks up there with the best.

This is a fairly decent old war movie. I didn't think that there was that much interest in torpedo boats until later, with John Kennedy's history and the TV show with Ernest Borgnine. It does get the grittiness of war down pretty well, and the fact that all of those left in the Phillipines were in a desperate situation. Such as Donna Reed's character, Lieutenant Davis, whose prospects of surviving the war seemed grim. But then that was true of the men in the naval battalion as well. John Wayne, as usual, played John Wayne. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Robert Montgomery was good as well, along with some of the old character actors from that era. Worth a look.

Big John Wayne gets second-billing to Robert Montgomery in this early stage of his career. There's no particularly dominant theme other than that things are going pear-shaped.It's life in the Pacific theatre during WW2. American forces are going about their jobs and facing the apparently unstoppable juggernaut of Imperial Japan after it more-or-less rolled-up the British like a cheap carpet. Now it's the Yanks turn. This is not a full in-yer-face set-piece war movie, but rather about the gradual disintegration of mounting reversals largely out of view, and how they impact upon people at a local level. It's very personal. Relationships feature as much as conflict. The vagaries of war are brought into sudden and sharp focus by local attacks and the immediacy of death. Retreat becomes fractious and confused. Not everyone is gonna get away.Most of the action turns around a squad of American PT boats. And here the movie excels in its depiction of these splendid vessels powering through the seas. There's some really nice sequences and it's well worth a watch for PT boat fans. We get to see "I shall return" General McArthur doing a runner with surprising egg-suck frankness, considering how America never liked to advertise its military failures.Acting is believable by all concerned. Editing & other technical issues are all of the standard that gave John Ford his reputation. It's a long movie at over 130mins, but seldom drags on account of its good mix of action and story. Filmed in B&W.I'm surprised this work doesn't feature more highly in popularity lists. It's got a helluva lot going for it in an understated, almost British-like stiff-upper-lip way.

After so many years of reading about this fictionalized filmed account of the events of American sailors dealing with the invasion of Japanese forces in the Phillipine peninsula, I finally watched They Were Expendable on VHS today. With John Ford as director, we see a fine drama of the struggles after Pearl Harbor of the Navy men trying to stay one step ahead of what they referred to as the Japs during their maritime missions of battle. Robert Montgomery and John Wayne play the superior officers put in charge of many young men not quite trained for the enemy attacks though they pull ahead with their best foot forward, anyway. While quite serious, there are some subtle humorous touches not to mention a slightly touching romance between Wayne and Donna Reed as a nurse that effectively pulls at the heartstrings down to hearing Ward Bond and many of his shipmates sing in accompaniment while Ms. Reed, Wayne, and many of the officers have a quiet dinner in a tent. In fact, part of the time, I couldn't help thinking of a similar scene in my favorite movie-It's a Wonderful Life-when Bond also accompanied with Frank Faylen on the song "I Love You Truly" as Ms. Reed and Jimmy Stewart were kissing on their honeymoon! And the battle scenes were some of the most exciting at the time. So on that note, They Were Expendable comes highly recommended.