Eight Iron Men

Great acting. A real psychological portrayal of soldiers in WWII. Very honest and unglamorous considering the number of BS WWII mythology films in the '50s. Marvin and Kiley are great along with a bunch of guys (Colucci) that I'd never heard of. The fantasy sequences break up the tense yet tedious, claustrophobic atmosphere. Great B&W cinematography with excellent dramatic CUs. I'm not surprised given the human quality of this war movie that it was part of the Stanley Kramer production company. Save Smalls or eat his piece of cake!!!!!! Lee Marvin was one of the great American actors. What an ensemble in this film. All acting is top notch. the characters are all ones that we know–the ladies man, the stoic, the emotional and passionate one...great!

"Eight Iron Men" is a war film filled with familiar faces--both of actors whose faces you'll recognize but not their names as well as a few folks before they hit stardom...as well as one guy who used to be a very big child star back in the day.

The plot is simple. While a group of eight G.I.s are hunkered down in the remnants of an Italian town, one in the group gets pinned down by a German machine gun nest. The rest of the company want to try to rescue him...but they are ordered by the Major not to attempt this, as he doesn't want to lose additional troops.

The most interesting cast member is Lee Marvin--playing pretty much the sort of guy he really was during WWII. He's great...and it's one of his earliest roles. Additional interesting cast members include Bonar Colleano, Dickie Moore and Richard Kiley. Colleano is a familiar face and he was an American living in Britain, so whenever a British film wanted a stereotypical American, they'd cast Colleano. Moore was a HUGE child star and member of Our Gang. And Richard Kiley later went on to great fame playing many roles on TV and Broadway. What these men and the rest of the cast have in common is that they weren't yet stars and were excellent at playing average Joes.

The net effect of this film is an interesting psychological portrait of ordinary men stretched to the limits. You can see the best and the worst of some of the guys...but most just wanna protect their tushes and survive the see the end of the war. Overall, it's a nice little low budget film--excelling with realism and full of grit.

A mix of "Stalag 17" and television's "Combat" series (which it inspired), "Eight Iron Men" (1952) is my favorite war movie. Made when Director Edward Dmytryk was still paying attention to his acting for the camera direction, "Eight Iron Men" is Harry Brown's adaptation of his play "A Sound of Hunting". Brown would later write one of the more classic episodes of "Combat".

Dmytryk, noted for his action sequences, was smart enough to concentrate on the play's extremely clever repartee between the members of an infantry squad who are marking time in the ruins of a destroyed town in Europe late in WWII. Squad leader Sgt. Mooney (Lee Marvin) has somehow managed to keep his group intact up to this point of the war. His goal of leaving the town with all seven of his men is threatened when the squad's most inept member Private Small (George Cooper) gets himself pinned down in a shell-hole; a few yards away from a well-protected German machine gun nest.

With orders to pull back the squad is torn between disobeying or abandoning their buddy to the Germans. Their decision is further complicated by not knowing if Small is still alive. Once this situation has been fleshed out, Dmytryk builds up the tension as it becomes closer and closer to the time they must leave.

By the end of the film you feel like you know all the six of Mooney's multi-ethnic squad members. There is a comedian (Nick Dennis), a hot-head (Richard Kiley), a pragmatist (Arthur Franz), a cub scout (Dickie Moore), a war-weary dreamer (James Griffith), and a dame obsessed gold brick (Bonar Colleano).

Much like "Das Boot" and "Cross of Iron", the members of the squad have shared so many intense experiences that they have become closer to each other than they ever were to their own family members. This makes their choice even more difficult.

Like the best anti-war films, "Eight Iron Men" is full of hard-bitten cynicism as a group of humans try to maintain their dignity in an insane environment. The face of war is gritty-not glamorous in "Eight Iron Men" and the film is not for those looking for fast edits and flashy action sequences.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

This is a tense little war drama from Columbia. The production values aren't much, but they really don't have to be. Released in 1952 and directed by Edward Dmytryck, it deals more with the personal than the patriotic. It is a WW2 drama that tried to find an audience during the Korean War. That couldn't have been easy.

It deals with the inter-personal relations between eight war weary GI's stuck up on the line in war torn European town. The lead is an ex-pat New Yorker named Bonar Colleano. He isn't well known in the states, but he was a big star in England during the war. Always playing the wise cracking Yank. His co-lead is Lee Marvin. He plays the squad leader and the glue that keeps these dogfaces together. The cast is rounded out by Arthur Franz, Dick(ie) Moore, and Richar Kiley. None of them big names in 1952, but all of them up to the job.

We find this beat up group jammed in a cellar while one of them is pinned down in a foxhole by a German machine gun. The squad is told they will be pulled off the line and they have to decide if or how they are going to rescue their buddy. Each squad member faces his own moment of truth. Some show bravery, some cowardice, some indecision, and one is just trigger happy and about ready to go over the edge.

I like this movie, but it does have a couple of problems. I mentioned the production values. It's a little set bound - almost like a stage play. Most of the action takes place in the cellar, and the exteriors are stock WW2 war torn European street. The dialogue does get a little corny in spots. But the main problem I have with this movie is the basic premise. I can understand an isolated group of guys, faced with the prospect of being pulled out of combat having mixed emotions about putting themselves back in harm's way to rescue a comrade, but that's the dilemma. How could they, in good conscience, leave him behind? Besides, this is an experienced infantry squad loaded with weapons. How could they not figure out a way to successfully assault a single machine gun nest. Despite these criticisms, the movie holds up well. The characters are human - not cartoons.

It's hard to find, but if you're a war movie buff, keep looking.

"Eight Iron Men" is a close-up picture of the American GIs of one squad in the later days of combat in World War II. This squad has been holding a patrol position in a bombed town where German snipers are in hiding. When one three-man patrol is returning to the squad's position, it's fired upon by a machine gun and one of the men slips and is pinned down. The rest of the film has the members of the squad trying to decide to rescue the pinned down GI, or not. With orders coming for them to withdraw behind their lines, there's some nice drama in this.

I think a couple of characters were overly played. Lee Marvin will be the most recognized of the cast as Sgt. Joe Mooney. He shows the turmoil of not wanting to leave a man behind and the risking of more lives to save the one man. To audiences who have never been in such a situation (including veterans like me with no combat time), "Iron Men" does seem very talky. But realizing that this squad has been holed up in this position for more than two weeks, it's not so unreasonable to think that they may talk about things other than their current situation. So, food, the girl back home, family and some fun times were all things that GIs in combat were likely to think and talk about with their fellow GIs.

While some GIs no doubt had a pinup picture of a famous movie personality, how many had fox holes or lodgings in combat where they could put a magazine photo on a wall? The movie-star pinup was one of those throwaway items that Hollywood seemed to toss into so many war movies after World War II.

This is an all-male cast and story, but Columbia managed to sneak some "hot" female type in the pinups and dreams of a couple of the GIs. And, in its usual style (or lack thereof), the movie promos highlighted the sexual allure, which really accounted for a small amount of film time. The cinematography and direction elevated this film.

My favorite line in this film is when Capt. Trelawny says to Sgt. Mooney, "You know, sergeant, before the war I used to be a car salesman. I used to smile all the time. Every time someone came in the door I gave 'em a big smile."