It's taken me 3 viewings to conclude that this movie just does not work. The throughline and dramatic arc are D.O.A.; with any impact split and weakened between dual male leads (John Wayne, Robert Montgomery), neither of whom you warm to, and a very looooooong opening 45 minutes lost to dramatic fumbles. What threw me off, is that every frame of it looks like a b&w Rembrandt. It's unusually well-composed, and certain vivid settings (The hospital at Corregidor, a thatch-hut turned into a make-out den) rate as high points among ALL the films I've seen. The footage of Japanese planes dive-bombing swift boats is thrilling and impressive.
Individual moments stand out, but the movie is a fragmented, episodic muddle. Ford underplays everything to the point of exasperation. So the score has to work twice as hard to to convince you that unnoticeable plot "developments" matter, because their significance is below the threshold of human perception. Visible emotions are regarded as intrusions to be reduced or omitted. Characters are continually succumbing (offscreen) presumably to chronic cases of under-utilization. 30 chapters of this would be more than enough, but there are 44. The movie has lost its way and devolved into a hopelessly uniform texture of middle-gray long before it ends.
Wayne, who managed not to serve in WW2, plays his character as an irritable jerk, probably in the hope he would look strong/patriotic and avoid charges of cowardice, or being a chicken-hawk. And as usual, Ford's ham-handed use of a few motifs parlays American standards (Anchors Aweigh, Over There and Red River Valley???) into major annoyances via clumsy and thoughtless repetition. 'They Were Expendable' is a seriously uptight movie.
Individual moments stand out, but the movie is a fragmented, episodic muddle. Ford underplays everything to the point of exasperation. So the score has to work twice as hard to to convince you that unnoticeable plot "developments" matter, because their significance is below the threshold of human perception. Visible emotions are regarded as intrusions to be reduced or omitted. Characters are continually succumbing (offscreen) presumably to chronic cases of under-utilization. 30 chapters of this would be more than enough, but there are 44. The movie has lost its way and devolved into a hopelessly uniform texture of middle-gray long before it ends.
Wayne, who managed not to serve in WW2, plays his character as an irritable jerk, probably in the hope he would look strong/patriotic and avoid charges of cowardice, or being a chicken-hawk. And as usual, Ford's ham-handed use of a few motifs parlays American standards (Anchors Aweigh, Over There and Red River Valley???) into major annoyances via clumsy and thoughtless repetition. 'They Were Expendable' is a seriously uptight movie.