Word: iwo
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...week or so ago this newspaper reviewed one of the recent outburst of war movies, "Sands of Iwo Jima." We said the movie was trite and inaccurate. The next morning's mail promptly turned up a letter and a postcard, the second signed by "one who was there." Both claimed that the movie was realistic and therefore praiseworthy, mainly because it included clips from official Navy documentaries about the Pacific...
...like. For "Battleground" combines a documentary's accuracy with the close-up look at individuals that no documentary can give. And it avoids the stereotyped action (boy meets girl and leaves her because duty calls, corporal hates sergeant because of prewar rivalry but repents when wounded) of "Sands of Iwo Jima...
...sleep-tonight level, rather than trying to cover the complexity of an entire operation. Genuine combat films are fine, but you may find they go down better straight, as in "Fighting Lady" or "Action in North Africa," than when watered down with histrionics, as in "Sands of Iwo Jima." And if you're interested in something a little more subtle than isolated clips of a battleship shelling a beach, go see "Battle-ground...
...perfectly obvious that the script writer for this film never got closer to the sands of Iwo Jima than Laguna Beach. He has, however, read several lousy war books, from which he has gleaned that 1.) all sergeants are tough, but underneath they are just like anyone else; 2.) the boys on the beachheads are more preoccupied with life around the corner drugstore back home than they are with the war immediately at hand; and 3.) the Marines have a great tradition...
...referred to with reverence as "The 'Canal"). It is also explained clearly that his wife has deserted him in some dastardly fashion, taking his ten-year-old son, his pride and joy. (That's why he's tough, see). But it isn't until halfway between the Tarawa and Iwo campaigns that he shows his true nobility by feeding Pablum to the infant son of a girl he has picked up in a bar instead of carrying the interview to its logical conclusion...