OK, so I got a head start on my war movie viewing for Memorial Day. This one may have caught my attention because of John Wayne getting an Oscar nod for it when he thought his She Wore a Yellow Ribbon performance worthier. As it is, some viewers think SoIJ is great, and some think Wayne is the only great thing about it. I'm sure four years after World War II wasn't great timing for public interest either.
The story begins with some U.S. Marines arriving in New Zealand in 1943. Sgt. John Stryker (Wayne) strikes me as a typical harsh sarge, but his men deem him unusually so. Most personally hostile to him are PFC Pete Conway (John Agar), son of a colonel whom Stryker liked but who wasn't a kind father, so Conway tars Stryker by association; and PFC Al Thomas (Forrest Tucker), on whom Stryker had snitched in the past. As a former sergeant major with a drinking problem, Stryker doesn't have the cleanest record himself. Nevertheless, his overall approach gradually wins the men's admiration, starting with the Battle of Tarawa. And you can guess the climactic setting.
The romance tag is primarily for Conway and Allison Bromley (Adele Mara), whom he meets at a dance on shore leave. To the movie's credit, they admit they were extraordinarily quick to fall in love and get married. Perhaps that happens a lot during war. The other romance-related arc concerns Stryker, a divorcee whose now 10-year-old son never answers his letters. He eventually softens to the advances of a bargirl (Julie Bishop) but doesn't pursue her for long.
SoIJ set a record for the most expensive production, well over the allotted budget, even if $1.4 million is chump change for Hollywood today. You can kind of tell from the tanks and other war trappings. Alas, I hardly found the action a highlight. It was so hackneyed that I found myself looking away to do other things now and then.
In addition to Wayne's acting, the Academy nominated the film for story, editing, and sound recording. Of those, I'd say the last was most deserving. I'm not surprised that the screenplay missed out, as dialogue tended to be prosaic and loose, even if "Lock and load" subsequently caught on.
I should add that if you're not watching a censored edition, you'd better get used to hearing "Nip" and "Jap." And I'm pretty sure that the enemy soldiers, who have no spoken lines, are not played by actors of Japanese descent; some of them look like caricatures.
To me, where SoIJ shines most is in the one-on-one interactions between Marines, especially the three I mentioned above. I rather enjoy seeing men learn to stop hating and/or disdaining each other. And one could make the case that the best silver lining of war is the strength of camaraderie that can result.
Classic or middling? I lean toward the latter, which appears to be the majority opinion. But it still felt like a decent way to spend 109 minutes.
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