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!

At first may seem like a poorly written and acted movie but you must REMEMBER that this movie was made in 1952 and one must use his/her imagination to fill in the missing special effects that we've been forced to endure.

Many movies of the era used the same format but the movie was about individual soldiers and not the war. I'm sure combat veterans would be better suited to comment on the goodness/badness of the film but suspect they would like it.

Maybe Lee Marvin's first starring role? But the character of Sergeant Joe Mooney was carried out thru his career and it is always a pleasure to watch.

A good movie for its time and remains so in my humble opinion.

Plainly based on a play, and like the film version a few years later of 'The Long and the Short and the Tall' an obvious studio set reminiscent of the dug-out in 'Journey's End' provides the confined backdrop to the squabblings of the cast; which director Dmytryk's exaggerated compositions simply emphasise the theatricality of. You can understand the change of title from 'A Sound of Hunting' to the more rugged 'Eight Iron Men'; but anybody lured in by the posters flaunting Mary Castle from the ghastly dream sequences really was in for a big disappointment...!

The rain-soaked exteriors in a bombed-out town anticipate the later scenes in 'Saving Private Ryan' (which after the famous opening sequence also became very talky), and the cast, while then short on star power (Kiley & Marvin made it big later, the former on Broadway) is an interesting one to connoisseurs of old movies.

Producer Stanley Kramer and Director Edward Dmytryk deliberately chose a cast of unknowns who later did move on to varying degrees of success in the film industry, most notably Lee Marvin, for the cast of Eight Iron Men.

It's a tense situation for this squad in some small town on the Italian front in World War II. One of their number is pinned down by a machine gun and it's wearing on the nerves of the other seven. Especially when they get orders to pull back and leave him until replacements come.

The film shows the tension on all of them. Lee Marvin with his war experience in the Pacific Theater is a natural as the concerned sergeant. Other good performances are from Arthur Franz, Richard Kiley, Nick Dennis, and most of all Bonar Colleano whose career was mostly in the United Kingdom. This was one of the few American made films for the New York City expatriate.

Eight Iron Men is based on a flop play on Broadway by Harry Brown which ran only 23 performances in 1945 and featured Sam Levene and a most unknown Burt Lancaster. Obviously someone named Harry Cohn didn't want to pay Lancaster's going rate in 1952 to get him for the screen version.

Even without Burt, Eight Iron Men is a well made war drama and should not be missed.

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.