|
starring: Richard Widmark, Jack Palance, Reginald Gardiner, Robert Wagner, Karl Maldendirected by: Lewis Milestone
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 0024543029854
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Original recording reissued, NTSC
Label: 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: May 21, 2002
Running Time: 114 minutes
Sales Rank: 32315
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Theatrical Release Date: 1950-12
Related Items:
Editorial Review:
Description:
Richard Widmark leads an all-star cast of leathernecks (Jack Palance, Robert Wagner, Karl Malden, Richard Boone, and Jack Webb) into battle on a heavily-fortified enemy island. Their objective is a Japanese rocket sit in the island's interior, and the combat-packed story follows the squad from beachhead to battle, as they pick their way trough enemy-infested jungles. Along the way, Widmark is transformed from a former school teacher into a combat-wizened leader, and his disparate squad of men is forged into a cohesive fighting unit.
Amazon.com:
Lewis Milestone was the American cinema's premier maker of war movies for three decades. He won an Academy Award for the single most honored film about World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), and made one of the most distinctive contemporaneous films of World War II, A Walk in the Sun (1945)--a notable influence on Saving Private Ryan. Still, some of his efforts were rather less than milestones, including The Halls of Montezuma. That still leaves room to accord the picture a marginal recommendation; it's well cast, competently made, and free of 'Hollywood' heroics. But the hallmarks of Milestone's style--such as his syncopated tracking shots--were becoming mannerisms, and the screenplay's rhythms of personal crises set against the bigger picture of the military campaign are pretty mechanical.
Richard Widmark stars as a Marine platoon leader who, having brought only seven of his men through Guadalcanal, is determined to see them safely through the next island conquest. The lieutenant was a schoolteacher in civilian life--as we see in flashbacks--and one member of his command is a former student (Richard Hylton) he helped overcome fear. Other platoon members include ex-boxer Jack Palance, trigger-happy bad boy Skip Homeier, hardcase veterans Neville Brand and Bert Freed, and Karl Malden as a philosophical corpsman. However, the most arresting performance is given by Milestone discovery Richard Boone, making his screen debut as a sympathetic colonel stuck with fighting the Japanese and fighting off a miserable cold at the same time. --Richard T. Jameson
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - ...."THIS US MARINE FILM IS ....NONPAREIL"....THE BEST!!!
...Nowhere, have I set eyes on a better Marine movie than this one...it has so much to offer besides the lethal war scenes...ponder this scene...the Marines leaving the safe sanctuary of those gaping LST doors in their briney wake, even the music puts your in their boots...mulling over in their minds that shortly, this is their last day on earth...[powerful cerebrate moment]...the clanky Amtraks churning up the blue/white sea while racing towards the Line of Departure...all hell is about to blast ... Read More
Rating:  - A tribute to the Marine Corps and their campaigns against the Japanese in the South Pacific...
The hate content in war films which had up to this point been reserved mainly for the Germans was now temporarily re-channeled in the direction of the Japanese, and the Pacific War was revived in aggressive patriotism in films like Allan Dwan's "Sands of Iwo Jima," Fritz Lang's "I Shall Return, " Nicolas Ray's "Flying Leathernecks," and Lewis Milestone's "Hall of Montezuma."
The focus of Milestone's film is the capture of a site on which the enemy have set up rocket sites... A Marine ... Read More
Rating:  - gyrenegeorge
A solid, vintage WWII film about Marines in the pacific, with a large, star-studded cast in both major and supporting roles, and largely accurate attention to detail in uniforms, weapons, and equipment.
Rating: - 1950s war movie that is ahead of its time
As a son of a US Marine I'd like to start off by recommending this film to anybody looking for possible gift ideas for a veteran. My dad and I both were pleasantly surprised by this film.
About the film
The Halls of Montezuma seemed a bit ahead of its time. The story centers around an USMC officer's growing war fatigue. A former high school teacher, Lt. Carl Anderson, is tasked with taking a small patrol into enemy territory to gather intelligence about the Japanese rocket ... Read More
Rating:  - Ok second World War ra ra marine movie
Interesting footage, flag waving patriotism, pick the future star movie of Marine landing on Japanese held island, but little suspense.
|
