Word: hodiak
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Battleground. The defense of Bastogne as seen by a squad of its defenders; with Van Johnson, John Hodiak and George Murphy (TIME, Nov.14...
...humor and some standard war movie heroics, it concentrates on one squad of the 101st Airborne Division, which was enveloped near Bastogne by the surprise Nazi breakthrough of December 1944. The eight-day defense of Bastogne is gallantly manned by several of MGM's regulars (Van Johnson, John Hodiak, George Murphy, Ricardo Montalban), who were toughened up before the filming by two weeks' basic training, but who still look too full-faced for their battle-weary roles...
...sternest studio-made war film since The Story of GI Joe. On the debit side, each soldier is given a bit of colorful routine that is tiresomely underlined every time the soldier is seen: Private Douglas Fowley loses or clicks his store-bought teeth; ex-Editor John Hodiak mourns over the fact that his wife in Sedalia knows more about the battle than he does. But Director William Wellman threads his way through these overworked signposts of character and makes each of the "Screaming Eagles" a rounded, tough human being. Ruthlessly demanding authentic gesture and movement from his actors, Wellman...
...Bribe, dame and dilemma are beautifully embodied (but hardly acted) by Ava Gardner, wife of a derelict U.S. flyer (John Hodiak). When not hung over from bad rum and alleged combat fatigue, Hodiak is busy smuggling airplane engines to Central America with the help of a suave mastermind (Vincent Price) and a broken-down fingerman (Charles Laughton). Fed-Man Taylor finally convinces himself, with some hard-breathing monologuing, that Ava is innocent but deeply implicated. So why not sell out on his job and collect on his love-as well as on Laughton's $12,000 in hush money...
Command Decision largely ignores the men who handled the planes, although most of the film's emotional sock is in the bit parts of the men who flew missions, well played by John Hodiak, Cameron Mitchell, Marshall Thompson and Michael Steele. Like the play and the book before it, the movie makes out a sympathetic case for the desk-bound generals and echoes Novelist-War Correspondent Ernest Hemingway's observation that generals are good people...