Brückenkopf X

"Beachhead" is an okay war film but it certainly could have been a lot better. It's a shame, as with a few changes, it would have been a dandy film.

The film begins with a small group of men (including Frank Lovejoy and a young Tony Curtis) in the Pacific are sent on a reconnaissance mission just before a huge invasion during WWII. They need to find a Frenchman and determine if the information he's relayed to the military about the Japanese is accurate or not. Not surprisingly for a clichéd film, when they finally find him he turns out to have a hot daughter--one who really bogs down the film and does nothing to advance the film. Again and again, the guys seem to forget that their goal is to get the information and get back as soon as possible--as they REALLY want to score with this cute young lady! In the end, I assume they didn't have enough money to complete the spectacular battle sequence--so they superimposed a lot of fake explosions over the enemy soldiers and a ship that seemed to have nothing to do with this battle scene! While it's not a terrible film (there are a few taut moments), there are just too many plot problems and silly dialog to make it a film you need to see. Also, it did seem very strange that the Frenchman's hot daughter had no French accent whatsoever. Odd, to say the least.

Standard Hollywood war heroics, clearly minor-league despite being filmed in pleasant Technicolor; it's yet another Pacific-based actioner with a tight American unit on an 'impossible' mission before the fleet's planned all-out attack. Typically, tension is created among the men by the fact that the commanding officer (Frank Lovejoy) is 'tainted' – his leadership qualities having been taken to task over the massacre at Guadalcanal. Here, too, he causes the death of two of his underlings – leaving only himself and Tony Curtis to verify the message sent by a French missionary from a Japanese-held island. When they finally come across him, the soldiers are surprised to find he has brought a daughter (Mary Murphy) along: of course, this strains the relationship between the two fighting men all the more – though it's rather silly of middle-aged Lovejoy to think he could offer competition to the rugged, handsome Curtis! The action set-pieces are adequately handled under the circumstances (with one surprising bit involving a U.S. marine being dragged by the enemy inside their tank about to explode from his own grenade!) but, at the end of the day, the film emerges a rather undistinguished entry within this prolific genre.

See it – This Tony Curtis movie is finally being rediscovered, and it is beyond me how it has gone under the radar for so long. In some ways, this is superior to a lot of other WWII movies. It is the story of 4 marines who embark on a secret mission on a Japanese-occupied island. Their mission is to sneak through the jungle to meet an intelligence contact. It has a lot of rugged action and never lacks in the excitement department. But it is missing the elements that make a film a classic. For instance, the acting and script leave a lot to be desired. And the ending action scene is laughable because of the horrible special effects. I guess they didn't want to wait 30 years for the scene to be done right. But as shocking as it is to hear me say it, this is actually a good Tony Curtis action movie when it's all said and done. 4 out of 5 action rating

This particular war movie has its fine moments, implementing the good, old-fashioned "never-a-dull-moment" bravura common of the numerous World War II B-movies of its type. However, I find a few aspects baffling. The Marines assigned on secret missions such as those played by Curtis and Lovejoy should not be armed with standard rifles; hard-hitting weaponry like Thompson 'Tommy' .45 caliber submachine guns would have been more appropriate. There was one prop that was also questionable, like the immobile one-dimensional Type 95 Japanese tank they were taking shots at, which if memory serves me well, appeared to be a well-tailored but hilariously-obvious cardboard cutout!! But, aforementioned criteria aside, the film is indeed enlightening and I recommend it as quintessential entertainment for a late Saturday night. (I myself last saw this movie with my brother back in 1986 on a Saturday night/Sunday morning 2:00 a.m. time slot, on ABC Channel 7's well-renowned Late, Late Show.)

The other reviews pretty much cover the ground. The premise is pretty hokey. What was a French planter doing on islands that were never controlled by France. How could he have lived his whole life on those islands when he must have been born before the British, not the French, made them a protectorate? How did a planter living on an island occupied by the Japanese learn the location of sea mines planted around the island of Bougainville, 30 miles away?

One more complaint. Why do so many movies have the heroine trip and hurt her ankle. So many have silly scenes like that: "'help I've fallen and I can't get up."

I will next limit my comments to a few corrections.

One review refers to the scene of the action as an "atoll". Wrong, atolls are low islands built up from coral. This was obviously filmed on one of the high volcanic islands that dot the Pacific Ocean, Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands.

Another comment call it a "wartime movie". Filmed in 1953, it was far too late for that. After all WW II ended in 1945.

One review mentioned similar movies, described as those with

"American soldiers battling Japanese on the Pacific islands during the WWII are the following: ..... Objective Burma by Raoul Walsh with Errol Flynn"

Sorry, but Burma is a whole country all its own on the Asian mainland. It is not an island in the Pacific or any other ocean. The only coastline it has faces the Indian Ocean. The movie really frosted the Brits when it came out in 1944 since they knew full well that Burma was the objective of the British XIVth Army which re-conquered it from the Japanese. The Brits angrily objected to Americans claiming that victory in the movies. Ironically the XIVth Army was made up largely of divisions from the Indian Army.