Shortly after Pearl Harbor, a squadron of PT-boat crews in the Philippines must battle the Navy brass between skirmishes with the Japanese. The title says it all about the Navy's attitude towards the PT-boats and their crews.
Robert Montgomery John Wayne Donna Reed Jack Holt Ward Bond Marshall Thompson Paul Langton Leon Ames Arthur Walsh Donald Curtis Cameron Mitchell Louis Jean Heydt Jeff York Murray Alper Harry Tenbrook Jack Pennick Alex Havier Charles Trowbridge Robert Barrat Bruce Kellogg Tim Murdock Russell Simpson Vernon Steele Robert Emmett O'Connor Philip Ahn Steve Barclay Betty Blythe Danny Borzage Al Bridge Show All…
I sacrificati di Bataan, Les sacrifiés, Ein verlorener Haufen, 데이 워 익스펜더블, Les Sacrifiés, Schnellboote vor Bataan, No eran imprescindibles, I sacrificati, Fomos os Sacrificados, Felhasználhatóak voltak, Они были незаменимыми, 菲律宾浴血战, Fuimos los sacrificados, Ci których przewidziano na straty, 그들은 희생양이다, Byli obětováni, 菲律賓浴血戰, He antoivat kaikkensa, No eren imprescindibles, De skulle offras
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"A service man is supposed to have a funeral as a tribute to the way he spent his life. Wrapped in the flag he served under....and died for. In war you gotta forget those things and....get buried the best way you can."
"The Battle Hymn of the Republic," once triumphant and patriotic, now seems exhausted and pained, tragic. Indeed, "They Were Expendable," the title itself is in quotations in the opening credits. Andrew Sarris noted that this film marked Ford's estrangement from the cultural establishment - while he's kind of off-point there (the movie did very well with audiences and critics) this does mark the point where Ford begins to re-examine social codes and attack the establishment instead of giving…
One of the most relentlessly bleak films I've ever seen. Shot before the end of the war and released in the after-victory glow, TWE subtly reminds everyone that the bright, warm light on them is not the sun but Nagasaki. The film in question concerns not the attack on Japan but the fall of the Philippines, defended futilely by a group of soldiers forced to hold out as long as possible as the VIPs are evacuated. This if a film choked in death, where burning fuel and melting steel fill the nostrils and the quiet moments exist only to take clear records of casualties. Ford routinely depicts military duty as nonnegotiable but often tragic, but there is a powerful anger…
Maybe it’s unfair to John Ford to go into this here... but I can’t stand war movie aesthetics. For that ridiculous personal reason and that alone, “They Were Expendable” felt like a movie I’d put on for my dad to watch while I tried to take a nap on the sofa.
Directed by Ford — credited with his Navy rank and title; John Ford Captain U.S.N.R. - “Expendable” is as true and blue to the Second World War as the flag that got hoisted at Iwo Jima.
“Expendable” bears a screenplay penned by Frank Wead, a former Navy aviator, was largely funded by the U.S. Navy, used U.S. Navy vessels in its south Florida shoot, and started Robert Montgomery, a…
Unlike most war films coming out of Hollywood immediately after WWII, They Were Expendable is a solemn and sobering look at the conflict mainly through the eyes of two patrol torpedo boat captains, John Brickley (Robert Montgomery) and Rusty Ryan (John Wayne).
The story follows the early days of the Battle of the Philippines, from the attack on Pearl Harbor through to President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordering General Douglas MacArthur to relocate to Australia and abandon maintaining a foothold in the region. Unfortunately, some mediocre scenes on land unnecessarily pad out the runtime, including an aborted love story featuring Donna Reed as 2nd Lieutenant Sandy Davyss.
It's an unusual film for Wayne as his role is not the confident and excessively arrogant…
You're probably thinking oh boy, here's that girl who gushes about Robert Montgomery all of the time.
And yes, I'm going to keep on gushing about him. I adore him. I adore his onscreen presence. I adore his speaking voice. I adore his little mannerisms.
I admire him. For all of his efforts onscreen and off. He was very wealthy growing up and when his father lost all of their money, he committed suicide when Robert was just 18 years old and left the family penniless. He did gritty jobs just to make ends meet. Then he ended up in acting and the rest is history. He never went to College, but he read often and was a self-educated man. He…
I don’t think it’s an accident that only one of the so-called Five Who Came Back directed a World War II movie. And that one was forced on John Ford by the studio. Had MGM known how despairing a movie they were getting, I don’t think they would have insisted he make it.
Beneath a forced soundtrack of patriotic hymns and military academy fight songs is an elegiac story of attrition set between Pearl Harbor and the surrender at Bataan, on the steep downward arc of the U-shaped curve describing the Allied war in the Pacific. It’s a tribute to the underdogs dismissed as not “substantial” enough for war.
Bunts are laid down. Sacrifices made. Successful torpedoing are merely solo…
extremely exhausting and hopeless film, obviously john ford doing an exegesis of his own ww2 experiences and having it all spill over into a cynical portrayal of military bureaucracy, the futility of men trying their best and dying their least, all those who perished in the detached grinding gears of industrial warfare. the messiest ford i've seen so far, but even that has an accomplished air about it, a sprawling sense of trying to make sense out of a war that defies any clean summation.
I know that most films are adapted from novels and plays, and that the clamour to adapt best sellers usually take precedent over a new cinematic incarnation of Othello or Death of a Salesman, but not every best seller seems to translate to the screen with the same success? Having watched Yankee Pasha, which was also a best seller, the film that came out of Marshall's baby wasn't giving Gone With The Wind a run for its money in terms of memorable scenes or quotable lines. Unfortunately the same can be said of John Ford's They Were Expendable, another adaptation of a best seller, from William Lindsay White's novel of the same name. A film released in December of 1945,…
Sylvester Stallone,
Mel Gibson,
Jason Statham,
Hans Solo,
Puss in Boots,
Blade,
ARNOLD,
OG Old Spice Guy,
Jet Lag,
AND BRUCE WILLIS team up to travel back in the past to fight against racism and fascism, but instead, they find themselves fighting against Japanese Expansionism during WWII.
Overall, a pretty good film. Not enough action, but it has a good message.
The governing pronouncement is MacArthur's "I shall return." But Ford here peers into a world of transience, so the film remains suspended between promise and fulfillment. Like Only Angels Have Wings before it (or Hatari! after), its movements alternate between languor and tension, following up (masculine) camaraderie with some impressively composed battle sequences, so its overall setup is rather Hawksian. But this is still Ford, so even the 15-minute introduction into the Philippine outpost of the U.S. Navy—specifically the naval officer's retirement speech, which delays the radio announcement of the attack on Pearl Harbor and is observed by numerous achingly young faces—is liable to make one weep. Chiefly, the sense of youth being wasted is overwhelming, so e.g. Gardner's sheepish,…
This Expendables prequel sure is different from the rest of the series.
A pretty good WW2 flick that was created only a few years after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. It features a young John Wayne, and Robert Montgomery who is a real WW2 veteran. Apparently by the time they were done filming, the Japanese had surrendered and while the film went on to critical acclaim and several award nominations, it didn't do well at the box office. John Wayne blamed the fact that people were sick of seeing stories about the war, after living through it for several years.
"Holy smokes, Cookie, you call that soup?"
'"No, sir. That's dishwater."
"Oh...uh... Carry on then."
Moments of humanity, love and brotherhood amidst the intricacies and bureaucracy of war, this remains one of the bleakest films because it basically consists of a battle already lost, a film made as a tribute for all the silent lips forever stilled among the jungles. Soldiers resist as long as they can in a futile mission for a few less unfortunate others to be able to flee the islands, lives being constantly lost and nobody better than Ford to remind us how precious each one of them were.
