Develiker terrible... so disappointed.

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

jacobs-greenwood Directed by Edward Ludwig, based on a story by Borden Chase, who wrote the screenplay with Aeneas MacKenzie, this average war drama about the formation of Construction Battalions (C.B. - get it?) by the U.S. Navy during World War II also includes a love triangle subplot involving its three top-billed actors: John Wayne, Susan Hayward, and Dennis O'Keefe. Wayne plays a well known (and well liked, by his crews) construction company owner Wedge Donovan, who's recruited by Lieutenant Commander Robert Yarrow (O'Keefe) to help sell his idea to train and arm the construction specialists to his superiors.But Wayne's character (who dances the Jitterbug with Adele Mara, uncredited) is a bit of a hothead who doesn't take direction nor orders from others very well and that, in addition to his interest in Yarrow's girlfriend Connie Chesley (Hayward), is the basis for the story's conflict. The film's Score was nominated for an Academy Award.After Donovan's construction crew returns from doing a job for the Navy, during which several of his men are killed, Lt. Cmdr. Yarrow asks him to help go before some admirals to arm these specialists against the enemy. But when Donovan learns that the Navy wants to do more than just provide his men with weapons, that they want to train them (to fight properly) for perhaps 3 months or more, Wedge is impatient and refuses to cooperate further.Donovan decides to go with his men - William Frawley plays foreman Eddie Powers, Leonid Kinskey, J.M. Kerrigan, Grant Withers, Paul Fix, and Ben Welden (among others) - on their next job for the Navy, and Yarrow's newspaper reporter girlfriend Connie is assigned to go along for the story. She tells Donovan that the Lt. Cmdr. had been sent ahead to keep Wedge and his men from getting into trouble (e.g. the war). Their convoy heads for a Pacific island that's later invaded by the Japanese. During the invasion, when a few of his men are killed (because they weren't in the Navy's provided shelter), Donovan's temper gets the best of his judgment and he leads his construction crew into the middle of the crossfire that Yarrow had set–up to contend with Japan's invading force. The result is not pretty: a large number of Donovan's crew is killed or injured, including Connie, who'd been spending a considerable amount of time with Wedge.While Donovan is tending to her wound, she tells him that she loves him and Wedge proclaims the same before she passes out. Yarrow heard it all, but that doesn't keep him from forgiving and apologizing to Donovan's men for his error when, after realizing what he'd wrought, Wedge is at a loss for words.Wedge seems to have learned his lesson because he then helps Yarrow to form the Seabees, by recruiting construction specialists into training by the Navy for specific battalions (e.g. to build and repair runways and other requirements). Donovan's even given the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the Navy, working for Yarrow. When Connie's better, she's as upset to learn that Wedge doesn't want her as Yarrow is that she doesn't want him.Donovan and Yarrow then ship off to another Pacific island to build and secure a runway with a fuel depot. Unfortunately, his men make easy targets for the (smiling) Japanese snipers that still infest the "jungle". Naturally, this leads Donovan, who had changed and learned to perform within the Navy's system, to ignore Yarrow's orders once again and nearly cause the depot to fall into the now invading enemies' hands. But, like the cavalry, Donovan and his men who had been hunting the snipers return just in time to save the day (tractors & cranes in combat!), causing Wedge to lose his life heroically.After a ceremony honoring the brave Seabees and their successful defense, Yarrow and Connie decide that they can be together once again.

Robert J. Maxwell Done by the numbers, no chances taken, this is the kind of Herbert J. Yates product that everyone went to see during the war years. John Wayne, looking youngish and handsome, is Wedge Donovan, head of a civilian construction company whose workers include such familiar faces as Paul Fix, J. M. Kerrigan, and Fred Mertz -- I mean William Frawley. The roustabouts all work hard, drink hard, and get into brawls.Wayne's labor force is working on a Pacific island occupied by the U.S. Navy, mainly in the person of LTCDR Yarrow, Dennis O'Keefe, when they are attacked by Japanese aircraft and three of the men are killed. This raises John Wayne's hackles, and that, as usual, turns out to be a bad idea, especially for Wayne. He and his men grab guns and rush into the middle of an ambush the Navy has set for a Japanese landing. Wayne's impetuosity breaks up the trap and results in further deaths for his men.O'Keefe persuades Wayne and his men to join the Navy and become part of a new type of unit -- construction battalions, or CBs, or SeaBees. Now they're trained in military protocol, tactics, and the handling of arms, though their principal job remains the construction of airfields and other facilities near the front lines. If the script didn't spell this out for us, we'd get it anyway because of the patriotic chorus on the sound track -- "We build to fight and fight for what we build; We're SeaBees of the Navy!" O'Keefe is promoted to Commander and Wayne receives a commission as Lieutenant Commander. The Worker SeaBees remain swabs.Well! The NEXT time the Japs pull a landing, things turn out differently, I can tell you, although the SeaBees are outnumbered. Heroism abounds. And this time our side wins.John Wayne makes the ultimate sacrifice but it's a splendid one. He's shot dead while driving a bull dozer towards a huge oil tank. The dozer's blade cuts into the tank, the oil blossoms into a colossal explosion, and the ocean of flame cascades down upon the screaming, stereotypical monkeys below.Oh, did I mention that Susan Hayward is in this as a reporter? Well, a love interest really. Both O'Keefe and Wayne are in love with her. It's easy to understand why. She's young, fresh faced, with a wide expanse of forehead and a cutely upturned nose. Keeps the distaff side of the audience entertained. She's in love with both men and can't make up her mind. In the end, she decides she loves the gallant O'Keefe, perhaps because he's survived the battle while Wayne did not.It's a modest and engaging movie, a twin narrative of Wayne's integration into the disciplined life of the Navy and of the love triangle involving O'Keefe, Wayne, and Hayward. There's nothing in the least original or poetic about it. But if you're looking for a fast, exciting movie about a seldom-noticed unit of the Navy, this gets the job done. A bonus is that you get to see the massive bulk of John Wayne jitterbugging with a supple little girl.

theFoss This movie is one of my favorite John Wayne movies for all the wrong reasons. The Duke here is portrayed as a dull witted hothead until he bends to the will of the Navy, which, of course, in 1944, could do no wrong on the silver screen. The caricatures of the Japanese soldiers as grinning psychopaths who lived to take American lives seems ridiculous even when compared to other period movies. The film shows a medium close up of each Japanese sniper and tanker who then proceeds to grin for a full second before taking aim to kill yet another American, often unarmed civilian Americans at that! (Spoiler Warning!) The climactic scene has the Great American Hero so hacked off at the Japanese Army that he hops into a bulldozer and destroys an entire Japanese assault column and it's tanks as if pushing so much rubbish off the road! This one will never go into archives as the greatest war film of all time, but, is amusing in it's way as propaganda that approaches ridiculous in its depictions.

EuroNYC7 Typical John Wayne fare, with all the patriotic mumbo-jumbo and heroic banter which clearly betrays the picture as upright propaganda. Still, considering that it was released during the course of World War II , it's fairly justified.There is plenty of action including impressive hand-to-hand combat and firefight engagements; surprisingly, the Japanese two-man tanks employed against the Seabees (Construction Battalion)towards the climax definitely resembled the Imperial Japanese Army Type 94 tankettes (wonder how Republic Pictures pulled that one off)! Aside from the combat sequences, however, the corniness and simple, gung-ho dialect, not to mention that trite, Hollywoodesque love triangle gig sends one spiraling. And portraying the Japanese as the quintessential bug-toothed, eye-squinting, bespectacled subhumans constituted a complete turnoff (the profound racial overtones of those days never cease to amaze me; yes, they were our enemies - but what about the stereotypes about Black-Americans and Hispanics?). Frankly, the Japanese are an attractive people, and clearly those extras inside the tanks were N O T...(I had read in some movie book that they were hired from LA' s Chinatown). In any event, if you're ever in the mood for an ordinary World War II flick just for the action, then The Fighting Seabees could very well be a candidate; just for the action, nothing else!!