I finally got to watch this film not even knowing about it until pretty much now. I'm in my late 40's and watched multiple times Men In War and Pork Chop Hill because they were always on the TV as I was growing up, I'm a Navy Vet who served on the ground (behind the wire) in Iraq, so that is my background and experiences. I had seen The Steel Helmet before, and though this is going to sound sacrilegious, I was not that satisfied with it. This is an enjoyable war film, I liked it more then the Steel Helmet, less then Men In War and Pork Chop Hill. I give it the average rating of 7 I don't think it's a masterpiece or that its horrible, and 7 of 10 is a good score for a film. I thought the running drama of Basehart not wanting command was extremely dragged out and unnecessary, and a lot of the foot soldiers dialog was on the borderline WW2 film stupid. Also, like some of the 1 star reviews stated, the extreme cold and them constantly getting wet was hard to take. But my biggest criticisms were, where is the air cover, or where is the North Korean air assets if we didn't have any, and why did they leave this small group there for what seems like days?
On the positive side, the battle scenes at least at first were shockingly good, totally above most war movies made up to that point (1951), the first battle scene comes close to All Quiet On The Western Front quality in my book. So I was satisfied watching this film and recommend it to all war film lovers, 7 out of 10.
BTW a Medal Of Honor recipient, Raymond Harvey, was the technical adviser on this film, his bio is interesting, I wish they would just make films based on their actions alone, and leave out the silly melodrama but in 1951 I guess it was still necessary. Also, if it has not been mentioned by others supposedly this is James Dean's first movie, people have posted the specific part on youtube, I watched the whole film and never spotted him even though he has dialog, see if you can find him!
On the positive side, the battle scenes at least at first were shockingly good, totally above most war movies made up to that point (1951), the first battle scene comes close to All Quiet On The Western Front quality in my book. So I was satisfied watching this film and recommend it to all war film lovers, 7 out of 10.
BTW a Medal Of Honor recipient, Raymond Harvey, was the technical adviser on this film, his bio is interesting, I wish they would just make films based on their actions alone, and leave out the silly melodrama but in 1951 I guess it was still necessary. Also, if it has not been mentioned by others supposedly this is James Dean's first movie, people have posted the specific part on youtube, I watched the whole film and never spotted him even though he has dialog, see if you can find him!