SnoopyStyle
Lt. Rusty Ryan (John Wayne) is a veteran skipper of a PT boat in the Philipines and Lt. John Brickley (Robert Montgomery) is an eager young skipper of the group. Suddenly, Pearl Harbor is attacked by the Japanese. The squad's base is next and the survivors struggle to fight off the invading Japanese forces. They are forced back to Bataan and beyond.Honestly, I assumed PT boats were first introduced after Pearl Harbor but I guess there was a large buildup even before then. It makes sense that war production would ramp up after the outbreak of WWII and that PT boats would be part of that. This is an old fashion war film made in the depths of the war in the Pacific and released a few months after Japan's surrender. The tone is old melodrama of the highest order. The action is surprisingly good with some real boats and planes. Obviously, they got their hands on a few boats to film this for the war effort. Sure, there is plenty of projection backdrop work but the action still looks great. The romance does slow down the movie in the middle but it's expected from that era. This is solid war action from that era and the explosive boat footage is thrilling.
TankGuy
Lieutenant Brickley(Robert Montgomery)commands a small squadron of motor torpedo boats(or PT boats)in the U.S navy. Brass is sceptical of the effectiveness of his boats in a war situation but when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbour the PT boats are assigned to the military as couriers. Brickley and his men receive their baptism of fire when the squadron successfully attacks and sinks a Japanese cruiser. The U.S army continues to suffer heavy casualties on Bataan and Corregidor and Brickley's PT boats are ordered to evacuate General MacArthur and his staff from the Philippines. The PT boats continue to prove their worth in the battle of the Phillipines as they mount more unrelenting attacks on Japanese shipping.John Ford's sincere tribute to the motor torpedo boat squadrons and their role in the Pacific campaign of the second world war is ultimately fulfilling, if not corny in parts. Shot whilst the war was still raging and released shortly after it ended, They Were Expendable is one of many red blooded flag-wavers churned out by Hollywood around this time. Despite being painfully unrealistic. I did enjoy this one. Ford's masterful direction and profound style of storytelling set this movie apart from the rest. Although it is a little too long and there is a fair amount of padding in the form of a mushy romantic subplot that has been replicated in nearly every war movie since. There were a lot of dour scenes that I quickly lost interest in. The film also contains a lot of sugar coated sentiment about sacrifice and patriotism which is laid on rather thick, particularly in the final scene. However this is only reflective of the time in which the movie was made. They Were Expendable is carried by staunch talent. Many think this is a John Wayne movie, but the young Wayne plays a secondary character to Robert Montgomery. Although he still gets plenty of screen time and his character is crucial to the film's plot. The duke was forced to endure severe verbal abuse from John Ford throughout shooting because he hadn't served during the war. This abuse is said to have got so serious that Robert Montgomery intervened and told Ford to stop, thus reducing the director to tears. Regardless, John Wayne still gives a great performance and gets to command his own PT boat. Robert Montgomery is excellent in the lead as the tough skipper who rallies his men and boats against the might of the Japanese navy and air force. Ward Bond and other members of the "John Ford Stock Company" acquitted themselves well too. Jack Holt gave a fine turn as the granite jawed General Martin and B movie actor Al Bridge made an unbilled appearance as a Lieutenant Colonel.The movie was skilfully photographed in such a way that captured the intensity of combat. There are four taut battle scenes which are peppered throughout the movie's duration. I was actually impressed by the special effects which I thought were brilliant for a film made in 1945.In the 1940s They Were Expendable was just another propaganda war movie. Today it is a dated but deep homage to the men of the motor torpedo boat squadrons and the way in which they carried out their duties. 8/10.
smatysia
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.
secondtake
They Were Expendable (1945)Start with some perspective, in the months just after World War Two has ended. John Ford, the director, was by now widely recognized as one of America's greatest. After years of smaller successes, he hit it big with "Grapes of Wrath" and "Young Mr. Lincoln" right before the war. And in "Stagecoach" (1939) he helped revive the Western, and John Wayne's faltering career. By 1945 John Wayne was known for his sturdy, no-nonsense common sense approach to life, and love.Both men were the kind of Republican that meant individual freedom and self-reliance as much as patriotism (and not the Reagan style moralizing Republican). It is the rugged self-made-man sense that works to well here, because now John Wayne is in the military, the navy, just as the Japanese are invading (successfully) the Philippines. And in the military you have to follow orders. When Wayne wants to stay behind for love, and push on for military glory, he is forced to change his mind.Not that the men don't have individual traits. They do, in that great John Ford fashion, building up believable types in a group of characters. And the other lead, the main lead in fact (who directed part of the film when Ford was ill), is Robert Montgomery. Montgomery was a leading man of a different kind than Wayne, famous not for Westerns and war films, but everyday dramas and comedies. And he had been an actual PT boat commander in the war, and knew something about it that was irreplaceable.In fact, the film is remarkable for its verisimilitude--its convincingness, in both the broad sweep (the advance of the Japanese) and the details (all the things that make a movie make sense without distraction). While filmed in Florida, it looks completely like the Philippines, and the boats and planes (American planes, all of them--the great Mitsubishi Zero planes that wreaked havoc in the first year of the war were mostly destroyed) are real. The battle scenes as much as the straw hut barracks scenes are all believable, as much as Hollywood can pull off. There are times when you see the PT boats pushing toward a Japanese ship and a hundred shells hit within feet of the boat but never strike, and you it seems like terribly good luck, but I think the fear and the sense of probably death are what matters most.And survival. The title of the movie is actual a daring one, because it reminds viewers, many still straggling in from the theater of war to the hometown movie theater, that the war was brutal. And that meant that horrifying decisions were made, or were made for the troops because of circumstance. That is, as the Japanese swept across the Philippine islands, the withdrawal of American troops was incomplete and disorganized. Not only were many men sent to battle with little chance of winning, many others were simply left behind. It is frankly the kind of warfare we might not tolerate any longer--or that might make warmongers of many of us who proclaim peace above everything in relative peacetime. It does, also, make you see what a different, controlled kind of wars the mideast wars are, with casualties and bravery, but overall a sense of measured risk and step by step planning, backwards or forwards.Honestly, I'm not a war film fan. But I love good movies, and this is a good movie. It feels a little long by the time you hit two hours, but it never resorts to sentimentalism for its own sake. Many of the character actors (side actors) are terrific, including Donna Reed in a Donna Reedesque role (the sweet pretty girl who is just slightly unattainable). Wayne is in great form, I think, a carryover from "Stagecoach" but in a new universe. And Montgomery in his quiet way is admirably strong and central to making these troops, and the movie, proceed with determination.
