Big Jim McLain

An American political thriller; A story about two federal agents who are assigned the task of breaking up a ring of Communist Party troublemakers in Hawaii. This film has a propaganda tone, dealing with subject matter such as House Un-American Activities Committee investigations (the HUAC was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organisations suspected of having Communist ties), a major news item in late 1940s America. The script portrayed communists as inadequate, pseudo-intellectuals, error-prone gangsters, and agents of the Kremlin, and it declared that incidents in the film were based on the files of the HUAC Committee, without questioning the power that was used to jail people for contempt of court or its damaging effects on the careers of many artists it summoned. This melodramatic movie uses comic relief as well as mystery and a love story set against a travelogue of locations in Hawaii. Its subject matter was timely but crude, failing to be even-handed in its telling of a fictionalised spy story. Its depictions of anti-communists blurred the line of intent between serious documentary-drama and arousing and entertainment fact-based fiction. John Wayne gave his character potency, but his snarling attitude seemed misplaced, and some of the other characters introduced muddled the story. The story was about the American government rooting out communist influence in the United States post-war, but it was an inaccurate portrayal of that time and was playing to the hysteria of the time in attempting to educate the public.

While the brainwashed elite criticize this story of how Communism threatened the security of America in the 1950s, any unbiased viewer will understand a piece of history that has since been revised.

This movie was made while the liberal elite defended their liberalism by making a straw man of Senator McCarthy. John Wayne understood the real threat of Communism and their spies in America. Making this movie was unpopular then, nevertheless now; Wayne was a brave patriot who should be commended for doing the principled thing, however unpopular.

The liberal politicians and the media has waged war on the fight against communism for 40 years. That repeated mantra of group thinking has obscured the real attitudes of that era. This movie is valuable for the independent minded; it shows a history and culture that Hollywood wants to deny and ignore in the same way the Klan wants to deny and ignore the Holocaust.

It is not Wayne's best film. It is probably the least seen. However, a student of history or a student of Wayne's character should view the movie.

Y'know the old joke, told after Reagan was elected, that "One of every three Hollywood conservatives gets elected President"? (The joke being, of course, that there was only 3 conservatives in Hollywood)...well...

Not Wayne's greatest, or even a great, movie. But still, in these days if Political Correctness being hammered down our respective throats, it's nostalgia to know it used to be vice versa.

Darn, I miss the 1950s.

This was made in the midst of the Korean War and during the 'red scare' days and needs to be viewed in that context. The cold war was on and America had recently lost the security of being the sole nuclear power, the US Army was locked in a dismal stalemate after hordes of Communist Chinese soldiers poured over the Korean border launching a surprise attack against the vastly outnumbered UN forces snatching sure victory from them and pushing them back again into South Korea, Soviet pilots were flying against American pilots for the North Korean Air Force, American and allied soldiers in Europe were facing off against a large Soviet and allied communist army, at home there were fears of war with nuclear USSR and scandals as communist party members with links to Soviet agents were uncovered. This was the mess that America found itself in when this movie was made. This mix led in turn to paranoia, some well founded and some not. The answer to this threat seemed to be the House Un-American Activities Committee that used intimidation to do what it thought was necessary to secure American safety (Perhaps there's a lesson for in it us today as our people give away freedoms for safety) This film therefore should be viewed in the context of the times when it was made and not with 50 year hindsight, as doubtless 50 years from now our children will view at least some of the steps taken in the heightening of security today. While some critics have cited the committee for its violations of civil rights, it should be mentioned that many that have criticized this committee also heap praise upon the film industry for its patriotic films of World War II. Unfortunately this is a hypocritical viewpoint as the anti-Japanese films produced certainly helped produce the fear and paranoia that led to the abuse of Japanese-Americans' civil rights and their internment by their own government. The internment of a whole group is a much worse example of civil rights abuse than calling someone before congress resulting in them losing their job. Such is the narrow-sightedness of those who pick and choose their heroes and villains in black and white. The film in question deals with spies and saboteurs and not with (as one review gave me the impression of) the innocent "small fries". In the film the villains are not the idealists who go to American Communist Party meetings call everyone comrade debate Marx and Engel's viewpoints and who should run for election next fall and then go home to their spouses, but agents acting against the United States, and yes this did exist at the time. (People that had been believed innocent victims of communist 'witch hunts' were indeed shown later to have actually been foreign agents when the Soviet archives were opened after the collapse of communism in the USSR)

While facing the same problems as many other patriotic wartime films it does deliver enjoyable scenes and it is certainly mostly superior to many similar films made during World War II. The plot is generally entertaining but seems to suffer from an identity crisis as to whether it is trying to be more a counter espionage film or a romance film set in beautiful Hawaii. In fact a few parts even seem more reminiscent of a travelogue or a Hawaiian tourist advertisement. Despite this the plot does fill out and provides some entertainment. Wayne's acting is good as is that of most other cast members except for James Arness whose emotional outbursts don't come off as very believable when he gets infuriated about the traitorous party members and possibly Soo Fong also when recounting her personal ordeal about her 'recovery' from communism. She may have been trying to do her best with a script that seems to fall apart on this point of making communism sound like alcoholism or drug dependence. (You can almost picture John Wayne doing an 'intervention' and dragging off Stalin to the Betty Ford Clinic. In some ways this part of the movie reminds more of anti-drug or anti-sex exploitation films that have become cult classics such as Reefer Madness) While not the best, once the plot develops it is entertaining. Overall there are better films (and worse) about similar subjects and many better Wayne films but it is worth watching even if it's just to see one of the Korean-Cold War patriotic films or Wayne as a counterspy.

While Big Jim McLain will hardly rank with the greatest of John Wayne's films, it expresses the conflict between loyal American citizens and law enforcement officials and the threat posed by Soviet agents. Only since the release of some of the USSR archives can we see how real the threat was although rarely as simplistic as the film shows it. Big Jim McLain needs to be viewed in the context of its times just as other US wartime action films reflect the tenor of our role in World War II and how people saw the enemy of that day.