Os que Sabem Morrer

By good luck, I came across a VHS video (good print) of this 1950s Anthony Mann film. It was well worth watching. It is stark, unflinching, and offers an altogether convincing depiction of how soldiers behave in a harrowing, no-win situation. Robert Ryan and Aldo Ray, both truly fine actors, are excellent in their symbolically contrasting roles of two kinds of military men. Robert Keith and Vic Morrow are standouts in supporting roles. Keith is especially wonderful in an essentially non-speaking,though key, part...his face says it all. The music by Elmer Bernstein and the cinematography by the great Ernest Haller are perfect...the soundtrack creepy and other-worldly, and the cinematography capturing the "no man's land," confusing, deadly landscape in longshots, as well as the emotions of the soldiers when photographed close-up. See this film!

No director I know made the scenery as much a dramatic player as Mann did. Whether it was the West in the great Westerns he directed or the imaginary Korea of this movie, it seemed as though you were in the scene yourself watching from a tree. The movie is calm, almost contemplative, and even though you could argue the soldiers were stereotypes, they were so believable and so well acted, they seemed part of the scenery as well. The danger in the movie is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and the men die as most men do in war, carelessly, and almost wastefully. The actors are superb, totally believable, and in the case of Robert Keith heart-breaking. I recommend this film to anyone, it's simply the best largely unknown war film ever.

The only problem I have of this film is that the prints I've seen are of very low quality, or perhaps the original cinematography was poor. Otherwise it is a very interesting action piece about the first days of the Korean War.

They got lucky with the cast. Who can beat Robert Ryan in a war flick role? No matter what movie he was appearing in, he always looked like he'd spent the night sleeping in a foxhole. LQ Jones is in this too, I love his face. Even Vic Morrow, he of the outstanding acting ability, makes an appearance, years before he was cast in that television masterpiece, 'Combat!' The trek of the squad through North Korean held territory plays like a thriller. The sound editing is excellent, you can make out the little noises that would play havoc with your imagination on a battlefield, where you're sweating and half crazed with nervous tension.

This was supposed to be based on a novel called "Day Without End" but I found it in a bookstore, and the screenplay has absolutely nothing to do with the original story. I always wonder why it gets a screen credit. The novel was a conventional dull novel of world war two combat, and the film is a striking and unusual,an almost psychological thriller set on the battlefield. You can do well to check this one out.

A war film should have a sense of time and place for it to be exceptional and as I`ve said in previous reviews basically any movie featuring The Korean War could have easily taken place in any campaign of WW 2 . MEN IN WAR is a case in point that could have been set in the Ardennes in December 1944 as an American platoon are cut off by a German counter offensive . In fact it could easily have been set during the Indian wars of the 1870s with a bunch of calvarymen lost and surrounded by hostile natives

And yet director Anthony Mann and screenwriter Philip Yordan have made a very memorable and compelling Korean war movie that lifts it above B movie standards . The story is simple with a bunch of US soldiers stuck behind enemy lines but we`re shown what it`s like to be a soldier fighting a war , we`re shown the courage , the fear and the camaradeire of reluctant warriors. In many ways this could have been an Vietnam allegory like MASH or TOO LATE THE HERO . Only thing is MEN IN WAR was made several years before America got involved in Vietnam . It`s difficult to believe but it`s true as we see Lt Benson and Sgt Montana come close to " fragging " each other at one point or the quite remarkable scene where Sgt Killian picks some flowers and puts them in his helmet . If I have any problem with this movie it`s the final sequence that suggests that soldiers fight and die for medals when in fact soldiers fight and die for one another

A quick word about the cast: All are very good but the stand out performance is by Robert Keith as the nameless Colonel . As the movie progresses the audience care as much for the Colonel as much as Sgt Montana does . Perhaps when I mention that the Colonel has hardly one single line of dialogue you`ll understand just how superb Keith`s performance is

MEN IN WAR comes highly recommended

Another movie long considered 'lost', and now mercifully restored, Anthony Mann's "Men in War" is a war film worthy to take its place beside Terrence Malick's "The Thin Red Line", (you can see its influence on Malick's masterpiece); in other words, this is a near-masterpiece and certainly one of Mann's greatest films. The war in question is the Korean and another American patrol find themselves caught out in the open, like so many before them in so many other war films, as they try to survive and like Robert Aldrich's brilliant "Attack" is as much about the conflict between an officer and a sergeant as it is about the external conflict with the enemy. The principle protagonists are Robert Ryan and Aldo Ray whose contempt for each other is only matched by their contempt for the enemy. Both actors are outstanding and others in the exceptional cast include Robert Keith, Vic Morrow, Nehemiah Persoff, James Edwards and L Q Jones. You might call it an anti-war film since few films about men in conflict have painted such a dark picture of the costs of war and what it can do to men in the field. Indeed, this has even been called an 'art-house' war film which is probably just another way of saying that it's different and very intelligent. It's also stunningly well photographed in black and white by Ernest Haller and boasts another very good score by Elmer Bernstein. How it ever came to be 'lost' in the first place is something of a mystery, (did audiences simply find it too bleak?). Let's just be thankful, then, that it's been 'found' again.