Take the High Ground!

An interesting Korean-War era film, starring Richard Widmark and Karl Malden, Take the High Ground depicts sixteen weeks of basic training at Fort Bliss. The film revolves around the differing personalities of two drill sergeants (Widmark and Malden) as they shape hopeless recruits into combat-ready soldiers. Widmark's character, Sgt. First Class Thorne Ryan is a battle-hardened veteran, who believes that toughness is the best way to prepare recruits for combat. Staff Sgt. Laverne Holt (Malden), however, relies on compassion to help his men adjust to army life. These differences present a few interesting conflicts, but overall, their static characters add little. Like most basic training films, this movie offers a few predictable laughs and trivial subplots, but fails to develop a deep plot. Elaine Stewart's adulterous character, in particular, is unnecessary and only adds confusion. Overall, however, Take the High Ground is watchable, if not memorable.

An utterly routine military film, minus anything that might distinguish it from the many other recruiting posters of the time, e.g. The DI (1957), Battle Cry (1955), et al. Except for the first few minutes of combat in Korea, the remainder is taken up with Basic Training at Fort Bliss, TX. Widmark gets the stereotypical role of an emotionally crippled drill sergeant, while Malden is wasted as his straight-arrow assistant. Third billed Stewart is the required love interest, who unfortunately is all hair and little talent. The remainder of the cast fills out the ranks of recruit trainees, with the usual array of witty or problem personalities. The movie's one notable feature turns up in the multi-racial ranks of the trainees, a relatively new updating for Hollywood.

As a guy who went through Basic (at Ft. Bliss in the 60's), I have to agree with reviewer bkoganbing. Many of the incidents portrayed in the film would never have occurred in real training, especially Malden slugging Widmark in front of the trainees. But I guess the screenplay needed more action at that point. Then too, the language was really cleaned up for public viewing. I had to laugh every time Widmark benignly called the recruits "young people".

What surprises me is the movie's director, Richard Brooks. How he got the job of supervising this sort of pablum is a puzzle, having built a reputation for highly serious work as a screenwriter, Brute Force (1948), Crossfire (1947), et al. Anyway, the movie is fairly typical of the sanitized type of military drama of the 1950's, before the stark realities of Vietnam sank in. (Contrast Basic Training here with it's more starkly realistic counterpart in Full Metal Jacket {1987}.) All in all, Take The High Ground is little more than a bland period curiosity.

From its rowdy , ribald horse play , to its rousing marching song from its hard-boiled hates and slugging feuds to its tough-but-tender love story , this is a drama of our times , exciting , exalting , young , brave , and alive .The film begins in Korea , May 1951 during the bloody War . Later on , 1953 Fort Bliss , hard-nosed Sgt Thorne Ryan (Richard Widmark) is rewarded for heroics in Korea by a return to Fort Bliss , Texas , where he takes batch after batch of soldiers and recruits who wear the shoulder patch of the 4th Army - a white four-leaf clover on a red diamond . Along the way his fellow instructor, and good friend Sgt Holt helps him to vanquish the past's ghosts . There two previous Korean War combat veterans Sgt. Laverne Holt (Karl Malden) and Sgt. Thorne Ryan work as drill sergeants and both of them meet a lady who begins to turn his life around ; things go wrong when they fall in-love for the same woman (gorgeous Elaine Stewart) . Gripes ! Gags ! Girls ! Guts ! Guys !

This is a mild , acceptable war movie in which there's never any questioning of the righteousness of America's fighting men as a force for good . The training of the group of recruits is particularly hard and the dialogue drill sergeant is presumably ripped from experiences of actual trainer sergeants in all its crude service . Compared to the likes of ¨Full Metal jacket¨by Stanley Kubrick it is all rather simple and light . Nice acting by Richard Widwark who specialised in taking authoritarian types and giving more light and shade than the screenplay sometimes allowed . As we're meant to feel his frustration seeping into his sometimes harash approach to the recruits through training , while utterly appreciating that he is the expert man for the job , as well as he has to face the ghosts of his past experiences in Korea. Support cast is pretty well such as : Russ Tamblyn , Carleton Carpenter , Russ Tamblyn , Jerome Courtland . And brief appearances from : Steve Forrest , Robert Arthur , Acquanetta , Don Haggerty and James MacArthur .

It packs an evocative ad sensitive musical score by classy composer Dimitri Tiomkin. As well as colorful and glimmering Cinematography by John Alton, being shot on location in El Paso, Texas, and Fort Bliss, Texas, USA .Well directed in professional style by Richard Brooks and screen-played by Millard Kaufman , based on his story . Brooks' liberal sympathies extend to making the most literate of the latest intake a Blackman . Richard Brooks was a fine writer/director so consistently mixed the good and average which it became impossible to know that to expect from him next . Firstly he worked regularly as a Hollywood screenwriter . After that , his initial experience of directing was one of his own screenplays called ¨Crisis¨. The Richard Brooks films that have the greatest impact are realized during the 50s and 60s as ¨Cat on a hot tin roof¨, ¨Something of value¨ , ¨Elmer Gantry¨, ¨Sweet bird of youth¨, ¨In cold blood¨ , ¨Lord Jim¨. Brooks was a writer and director of Chekhovian depth , who mastered the use of understatement, anticlimax and implied emotion . His films enjoyed lasting appeal and tended to be more serious than the usual mainstream productions . Richard directed also good Westerns as the titled ¨The professionals ¨ with various tough stars as Burt Lancaster , Lee Marvin , Jack Palance , Robert Ryan and ¨Bite the bullet¨ . ¨Take the high ground¨ is an authentic must see , not to be missed for buffs of the warlike genre . An acceptable movie , hardly noticed for its theatrical release ; however , being nowadays very well considered . Rating : Decent , and passable film , because of its awesome acting , dialog , score are world class.

While this may not be the movie that made me want to join the Army in 1956, it may have helped. The plot is a formulaic coming of age in basic training story, turning boys into men. The personal interactions and love affairs of Widmark and Malden, the veterans of Korea who are now leading a trainng platoon at Fort Bliss, Texas, next to El Paso are also formulaic.

The real value of this picture is as a time capsule. Nothing herein is BS, dreamed up, or recreated such as are Platoon, or Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now, to mention some more modern highly praised but highly fictionalized films. Nor is it an anachronistic mish mash such or a low budget BW cheapie such as many of that period were.

Everything shown here is as it was at the time of filming and the background extras and other military individuals were actually going through infantry training with the real possibility of going to combat in Korea when it was being made. (An amusing aspect is that the opening scene of the newly arrived trainees and the disciplined troops entraining for their new assignments were filmed on the same day with the same Southern Pacific locomotive and equipment. Yet supposedly took place three months apart.)

Other time capsule films of the time are Bombers B-57, and Strategic Air Command, which prove that officially approved films can be entertaining and informative both.

At least Kubrick's film for its first part; in other words, the best movie ever made about military drills in a boot camp, far better for me than Ridley Scott's GI JANE, just a joke for me. Here, Richard Widmark is simply awesome, though the story could have been far darker, more dramatic, but I think the director Richard Brooks refused the idea to "disgust" the bulk of his audiences with a too gloomy atmosphere. The purpose was to denounce the harsh, brutal, sadistic methods of the US ARMY, or Marine Corps. That's what I got, what I understoood. And I was very amused to discover that, in the late eighties, a commercial for Lucky Strike cigarettes used a man with a face very close to Widmark's one for a sequence taking place precisely in a boot camp, where the sadistic instructor - with Widmark's face - pushes the young soldiers beyond the human resistance limit, showing that they were not lucky, like the cigarette brand.... Not very subtle but that tribute amused me much.