Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Good concept, poorly executed.

Best movie ever!

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

That's what a Japanese nurse tells House on Un-American Activities Investigator John Wayne (as the title character) about her feelings towards Communism when he questions her about her Communist ex-husband. Wayne's obsessively conservative politics take over his likable box-office appeal in this unfortunate political drama that only paints part of the picture. Halliwell's "Film Guide" described this film as a "Curious and rather offensive star vehicle in which the right-wing political shading interferes seriously with the entertainment value". I do not profess to be an expert on communism, but I do understand that the Red Scare of the late 1940's and 1950's was an era in Hollywood that destroyed many innocent people, and films like this, "The Red Menace" and "I Was a Communist For the FBI" are just as manipulative as the dangers they are preaching against. Layered with an unfortunate narration by Wayne in character, and a prologue of alleged communists being questioned, it is rather obvious from the beginning and ultimately self-serving.Wayne, an All-American hero whose appeal cannot be denied, was certainly entitled to "Freedom of Speech", but with the preachiness of this screenplay, he totally looses credibility. When Communists are seen, they are as obvious as the stereotypical Nazi's of those propaganda filled World War II movies. In the more serious war films, the most dangerous Nazi's were actually those who were cultured yet evil when it came down to performing their mission. Had Hollywood presented a different side of the "Red Scare", rather than just always one, these films might hold up better today. James Arness is perfectly cast as Wayne's co-hort (they seem like brothers), while Veda Ann Borg and Hans Conreid offer amusing supporting roles. I actually began to like the film just a tad bit more every time the blowzy Borg came on screen, especially in her drunken restaurant scene. "72 Inches of a Real Man!" she coos at Wayne as only she could in that femme fatal way. The humor, though, is utilized really to sidetrack the viewer. Filmed in black and white, the photography makes the film really uninvolving considering its Hawaiian setting.

"Big Jim McClain" is distinctive in several ways. First, it features three of the tallest men in the movies. John Wayne (six-feet, four inches), James Arness (six-feet, six inches), and Allan Napier (seven-hundred-and-twenty-two feet). Second, this, along with "The Green Berets", is the most political movie that John Wayne has ever made. It reflects accurately Wayne's view of the Communist Menace. This is the John Wayne who carried a cigarette lighter inscribed "**** Communism." Boy -- are they shifty -- and ruthless too.Allan Napier is the Russky head of the Hawaiian cell. He says something along the lines of, "I hate these domestic communists. These 'committed' party members. But we need them until we take power. Then -- liquidate." This is a staple of spy movies. They sacrifice one another remorselessly for the good of the cause. They're getting in all over too. After a professor takes the fifth, Wayne grumbles, "Now he's free to go back to teaching economics at the university and contaminate more young minds." We never learn about the nature of the contamination. There is a lone reference to Marx and several bitter comments about "the party line" and "all that baloney," but all we ever see of the Red Menace is that they plot to infect everybody by releasing a horde of sick rats in Honolulu. They could be pod people from outer space. They're pure e-vil.Wayne and Arness are members of the House Un-American Activities Committee, sent to Honolulu to uncover these Red moles who have infiltrated the unions. There is also a plot hatched by Napier to unloose all sorts of evil on the islands and halt shipping -- what with strikes and those infected rats. Arness is accidentally killed by the commies, but Wayne and the Hawaiian police capture the evildoers.It's a terrible movie but fascinating too. Never dull. It's hard to generalize about the acting. Some performances are decent, others are ludicrous. Wayne exudes his usual John Wayneness. Arness, who was The Thing in Howard Hawks' "The Thing From Another World," is likably competent as the sidekick. Nancy Olson is beautiful, in an extra-ordinary way. She plays a medical student and she should know how to do it, medicine having been demystified by her physician father. Captain Liu of the HPD cannot act. Neither can a couple of other members of the cast. An elderly Polish refugee is played like a character role in a movie from the early 1930s -- only badly. The lack of talent on display is embarrassing.As if in compensation the movie takes us on a tour of the sights. See the Pali? Notice John and Nancy riding the surf in a catamaran at Waikiki. Aren't the little native girls cute, doing a slow, hip-swinging hula? It's those darned Russkies who cause trouble in paradise.The intent of the flag-waving should reach the most "low-information" of voters. The opening scene has Daniel Webster practically rising from his grave and asking, "Neighbor, how stands the union?" The chief narration is by Wayne, who sometimes seems to shout his apoplectic, angry pronouncements into the microphone. He gets extra points for believing what he says.There's a humorous interlude involving Veda Ann Borg as a good-natured, alcoholic, nymphomaniac who refers to Wayne as "76" because he is 76 inches tall. "Oh ho, manama nui!" It's at once gripping and hilarious to see Wayne try to shepherd her through a dinner at the Royal Hawaiian.It occurred to me, as Wayne's plane is about to land and the stewardess announces that several fancy hotels can be seen on Waikiki through the window -- the Manoa among them -- that when I was a teaching assistant at a semi-exclusive university, I had cause to counsel a student who was agonizing over her low grades in my class. She didn't want to fail because she'd have to leave and attend a state university and it would kill her father. He was the manager of the Moana Hotel. I never could afford to see the inside of the Moana but years earlier I stole an over-sized towel with the Moana logo from its beach front. I squeaked her through, partly out of guilt.All apologies for that digression into the ironic but, really, it wouldn't have been much more helpful if I'd stuck to a discussion of the movie. It is to film what Grandma Moses is to painting.It's an awful movie, but you might enjoy it. I know I did.

Most cineastes are more or less left-wing; a film such as 'Big Jim McLain' will be bashed regardless of its intrinsic merits, and whether time has vindicated its picture of widespread communist labour-movement penetration or not. In truth, the movie is a cheap, ill-focused affair, and its prefatory acclaim for the 'undaunted' House Un-American Activities Committee should not excuse its faults, however rock-ribbed one's Republicanism. But it is neither as inept nor as rabid in its ideology as detractors make out.The pill of anti-communism is sugared by a deal of local colour (not literally; the grass-skirted gals who shimmy in several scenes are ill-served by the monochrome location work). There is some ham-fisted humour and makeup-mashing romance between the Duke and Nancy Olson, a rivalry for her hand with a Navy linguist and slugfests on the waterfront. An unpolitical popcorn-chewer would not have felt cheated.As discerning reviewers such as Dorothy Jones observed at the time, Hollywood's Red-bashing narratives differed little in substance from wartime anti-Nazi, spyhunting tales or Thirties sagas of G-men busting criminal rackets. The subversives and agitators apparently rife in the Islands are depicted as petty gangsters controlled by a suave but cynical puppeteer, akin to the 'legitimate businessman' at the top of a Mob operation (Alan Napier- the future Alfred the butler in TV's 'Batman').The story trundles along quite smartly, with long spells when the political fervour of agents Wayne and Arness is relegated. Only the murder of Wayne's partner (which is not dwelt upon) fires him up as he pronounces a eulogy in the morgue over his fellow-Marine turned crusading lawyer; earlier, Wayne had told his girl that he was just firing at the designated enemy, the same way he did in the Pacific. Let us not ask which side the Soviet Union was on in that war! The script plays down the foreign-infiltration aspect, preferring to paint its American communists as men who have lost faith in the country for no obvious reason-- don't mention the Depression-- and are now plotting to enslave it... rather like the Bodysnatchers of a slightly later and better example of paranoid cinema.Sometimes Wayne's frequent scenarist, James Edward Grant, piles on the moralising. A woman whose husband lured her into the CPUSA expiates the shame by working as a nurse in a leprosy colony. Wayne meets an old couple, obviously Jewish though not identified as such, whose son turned red after winning a trip to the USSR. There is an incongruous episode of a lunatic (Hans Conried, the future Dr Terwilliker) who offers to inform on the party cell, boasts of his secret inventions and contacts with Stalin, and then tells Wayne he has a plan to end all wars by making every man and woman in the world look the same. This irrelevant scene could almost be read as sabotage to convey Grant's real opinion of his assignment and the calibre of McCarthy's snitches.Olson, the other woman in 'Sunset Boulevard', is overshadowed by Veda Ann Borg's turn as a peroxide lush who fancies the Duke and embarrasses him in a nightclub. Again, if taken seriously this strand of the plot makes the investigation look like a clumsy wild goose chase.Moreover, Wayne is not the fascistic bully critics purported to see but is poised between the gallant, diffident cowboy of his pre-war movies and the crusty blowhard of the Sixties. It was his first for WB after his smash in 'The Quiet Man', and he makes a pleasant, modest impression. The film, launching his Batjac production company, was very much his pet project-- but maybe as much to help live down his avoidance of war service as to assist Tailgunner Joe. The Warner brothers, incubators of notorious nests of leftists since the mid-Thirties, had something to prove to suspicious congressmen too.Yet the end is equivocal. The Duke gets the girl, but the CP high-ups he has tracked down plead the Fifth and wriggle out of punishment. Objectively McLain's mission has failed; liberalism, benefit of the doubt, right of non-self-incrimination triumph. There is no 'Green Berets' afflatus as the end-credits roll; the commies live to subvert again. Many of the anti-red movies had this streak of pessimism and half-heartedness. They were against Hollywood's grain.The truth is that the public does not want to be preached at in return for the price of a ticket, and this muted denunciation went the way of most message pictures-- left or right. But that angle gives it more curiosity value than most actioners of its time.

I like this movie, but must admit it's rather cheesy. It's not that I disliked the plot of having John Wayne playing an FBI man bent on smashing communism--it certainly is unique and very much like the real life Wayne. No, what makes this movie so campy is James Arness' incredibly silly performance. Unlike Wayne, who seems rather restrained and cerebral in comparison, Arness responds to every commie the same way Mike Tyson responds to Evander Holyfield's ear! He goes nuts and beats the crap out of all of them, so there's not much dialog. He roughly responds to every potential enemy with "you commies make me so mad,..."--then WHAM, BAM, POW!!! Civil liberties aside, it's quite thrilling to watch him in action!