Le grand assaut

To employ a properly military analogy this film feels like a tired, none too bright straggler rejoining his unit long after better, smarter soldiers with names like "Battleground", "Objective Burma" and "Air Force" have checked in. And the fact that it was written by the son of Hollywood's chief censor while a third of it is comprised of stock footage only adds to its general air of dopeyness and unoriginality. C minus.

The star of the film is John Agar, who starred the year before in Sands of Iwo Jima with John Wayne. Agar was also a friend of my grandfather, and in fact, taught me to play poker when I was eight years old. Unfortunately, though Agar was in three films with The Duke, thanks in large part to his 5-year marriage to Shirley Temple ("Who wants to shake the hand of the first man to put it to America's sweetheart?"), he also starred in a lot of B sci-fi movies during the 1950s. He also did another WWII flick called Hell Raiders because he thought it would never be released, and it shouldn't have been, but it was. Although he did guest appearances in many 1960s and 1970s TV series, like Rawhide, Combat!, and Charlie's Angels, I had reservations about this one before I saw it because of Agar's filmography. Turns out that my apprehension was well-founded. It's just not a good film, sadly. John was a genuinely nice guy, did a lot of volunteer work, and loved to entertain people, but never warranted any big film success after he divorced America's sweetheart (who was apparently a serious witch, with a capital "B").

I thought it was cool that one of the characters in the film was from Klamath Falls, a small town in Southern Oregon where my dad was born and raised, and where one of my aunts and some cousins still live. It was that fact, and John Agar, that earned this one an additional star from me. One other thing that I liked about it is that it portrayed the hedgerow fighting in Normandy more extensively than any film that comes to mind. That's important because the hedgerows made breaking out of Normandy into the interior of France extremely difficult for the Allies. Otherwise, it was a pretty typical low-budget war movie with poor acting, lots of dramatics, and technical errors.

Like most of Agar's early movies, the surrounding cast were of sufficient quality to hide, and even carry, Mr. Shirley Temple.

The WW2 period featured is one that is usually skipped over, despite the importance and difficulty of that time. The Allies were under pressure from a well organised defence, taking full advantage of the local terrain, this is all well communicated by this movie.

Lovejoy, as the cagey experienced Sgt., is a marvel to watch, as his character does for his Lt., so he does for Agar, a wonderful fusion of living the role.

A worthy entry for any war movie buff

David Brian, John Agar, and Frank Lovejoy head a solid cast in Breakthrough a product of Warner Brothers B picture unit that skilfully employs real combat footage nicely integrated into the film

It's a simple plot as the film opens in Great Britain where the troops are gathering for the upcoming D-Day invasion. David Brian is a company commander and John Agar is new 2nd Lieutenant from Fort Benning who has in fact taken over the platoon Brian was formerly in charge of. A training foul up that could have been fatal gets Agar good and chewed out. However Sergeant Frank Lovejoy thinks Agar has the right stuff.

A bit of the plot from Twelve O'Clock High is also used in this film as well in regard to the conclusion.

A lot of familiar names and a lot of WW2 stock characters are used for the members of Agar's platoon.

The three leads are cast well and World War 2 film fans should be pleased.

It's spring 1944. The movie follows a squad of American soldiers going through training. They are part of the first wave on D-Day, and they fight onward to the end.

While I don't mind the characters, they aren't anything special. It is the classic one-of-every-kind sort of group. There are a few minor funny moments, but some downright awkward ones too. The action scenes with the actors are limited. They fill the rest out with real footage from different sides of the war and different battle locations. Some are recognizable and classic. Some are new and impressive. That's all I really want from this movie. There are probably ten minutes of real war footage that I like.