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They Were Expendable

	They Were Expendable
	by MGM (Video & DVD) Sales Rank: 25864 Price: $19.98

<I>They Were Expendable</I> is the greatest American film of the Second World War, made by America's greatest director, John Ford, who himself saw action from the Battle of Midway through D-day. Yet it's been oddly neglected. Or perhaps not so oddly: for as the matter-of-fact title implies, the film commemorates a period, from the eve of Pearl Harbor up to the impending fall of Bataan, when the Japanese conquest of the Pacific was in full cry and U.S. forces were fighting a desperate holding action. Although stirring movies had been made about these early days (<I>Wake Island</I>, <I>Bataan</I>, <I>Air Force</I>), they were gung ho in their resolve to see the tables turned. <I>They Were Expendable</I>, however, which was made when Allied victory was all but assured, is profoundly elegiac, with the patient grandeur of a tragic poem.<p> "They" are the officers and men of the Navy's PT boat service, an experimental motor-torpedo force relegated to courier duty on Manila Bay but eventually proven effective in combat. Their commander is played by Robert Montgomery, who actually served on a PT and later commanded a destroyer at Normandy; James Agee called his "the one unimprovable performance" of 1945. In addition to giving it, Montgomery codirected the breathtaking second-unit action sequences (and took over the first unit for a week when Ford broke his leg). John Wayne's costarring role as Montgomery's volatile second-in-command initially looks stereotypically blustery, but as the drama unfolds--the death of comrades, a friendship-that-never-gets-to-be-a-romance with an Army nurse (Donna Reed)--Wayne sounds notes of tenderness and vulnerability that will take Duke-bashers by surprise.<p> <I>They Were Expendable</I> is a heartbreakingly beautiful film, full of astonishing images of warfare, grief, courage, and dignity: the artificial "rainfall" that lashes the beached Wayne as his PT boat explodes in the surf; the glow around a communally improvised dinner for nurse Reed; an old ship-repairer (Russell Simpson, <I>The Grapes of Wrath</I>'s Pa Joad) settling in grimly to wait for the Japanese, with "Red River Valley" as benediction; the propeller spray that hangs over a jungle inlet, like the dust from one of Ford's cavalry pictures, as the PTs round a bend and disappear into history. This is a masterpiece. <I>--Richard T. Jameson</I> *Viewer Reviews* I ordered "They Were Expendable". It arrived in perfect condition and in a reasonable amount of time. I was pleased and would purchase from Amazon again. Back To Top
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