Memorable, crazy movie

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

which makes Otto Preminger's In Harm's Way even better. I've loved IHW for over four decades, mainly because of the straightforward, solid, and emotionally satisfying storytelling. I'll leave the synopsis of the movie to the other writers. Here, I just want to say thank you to all involved with this visually beautiful, patriotic morality tale of naval warfare in the Pacific Theater of World War II. There's something very satisfying with the combination of military history, political intrigue, love, lust-for-power, and Preminger's elegant use of black and white film. Bring aboard John Wayne at his most pensive and introspective, Kirk Douglas at his most dashing and tortured, Patricia Neal projecting a middle-aged sexiness that I couldn't even begin to appreciate the first time I saw IHW (1972), and a slew of great, great secondary performances, and the viewer may begin to get a little short of breath. How does one movie have so much going for it, and nobody's ever heard of it?Side note: It flopped at the box office. Oh, well.Even Jerry Goldsmith, a composer best known for Patton, gives IHW's score a richness that compliments the dreamy, creamy, and colorful cinematography. There are so many reasons to love In Harm's Way that a fan can and should forgive its many flaws. There are technical quibbles sprinkled throughout the film that make a nitpicker like me cringe, then shrug. And the most glaring flaw in the movie is the use of large models for the climactic sea battle between a Japanese force and Wayne's numerically inferior battle group. Critics have panned the whole movie for the non-CGI phoniness of the battle.The critics are wrong. Even Wayne and Douglas, who fought against the inclusion of the battle with Preminger, to know avail, were wrong. The battle gives In Harm's Way an "old school" feel, beyond the B&W and the fact that most of the actors and actresses and crew have passed on. In Harm's Way is my favorite war movie. Soap suds and slickeries and idiosyncrasies--and all those exploding car-length warships-- can't take away the fact that this is a very satisfying, well-acted, and grown- up story.

This is a great World War II movie. Historically it is fairly accurate, which a lot are not. John Wayne is at his best here. Burgess Meredith does his usual excellent acting job in a supporting role. Robert Mitchum has a role as the rapist of the girlfriend of Wayne's son and then to make amends (not that you can) goes on a suicide recon run to get info is done as well as you would expect. When Wayne finally gets promoted and put in charge of an operation, he understands the political back stabbing by the sector admiral whom he by passes in the information loop. This political officer is just out for the headlines and shows up to try and steal the spotlight, with his mealy mouthed politician of an aide it is very satisfying when he ends up putting his foot in his mouth and gets embarrassed in front of the entire press corps. When Wayne sends his own son out with the PT boats on a necessary but basically fruitless attack to delay the Jap ships it shows his character's iron resolve to get the job done no matter what the cost since his only son does not come back. This is a really good movie on several planes.

Jery Goldsmith's score certainly deserves great credit for boosting this film's status in spite of its flaws primarily in such simple matters as editing, continuity, factual blunders, and shadows of filming equipment showing up in a number of places. Of particular note in the Goldsmith score is the very compelling "San Francisco" theme music (a name I give for the sake of this commentary) as Paula Prentiss is seen grabbing a trolley car to meet "Mac" two-thirds of the way into the film. The french horn passage incorporated into that as Tom Tryon disembarks from the hospital ship is a crowning glory - a great set piece of film music!

This long,lumbering naval epic predates the various 1980's television mini-series about World War II. It's the same mixture of soap-opera action away from the battlefields and cheap-looking naval special effects that are no more convincing on the small screen than they were in theaters. Apparently,most of the budget was spent on a first-rate cast of actors who walk through substandard material. The beginning sequence of "In Harm's Way" has a two-minute plus opening tracking shot that establishes the scene as Pearl Harbor,December 6, 1941. At an officer's party,Liz(Barbara Bouchet),the drunken wife of Cmdr. Eddington (Kirk Douglas),makes a spectacle of herself. Since her husband is at sea with Capt. Rock Torrey(John Wayne),she heads off for a skinny-dip in the ocean with a pilot(Hugh O'Brien). Are they in for a nasty surprise the next morning! When the Japanese attack(depicted in brief,grainy shots of airplanes and a few explosions in the ocean),Lt. William McConnel(Tom Tryon)manages to get his destroyer out of the harbor before its bombed. At the same time,Torrey and Eddington's ship is sent to fend off the Japanese fleet and suffers a devastating attack.Several plot twists later,Torrey is sailing a desk and Eddington is shipped off to a remote supply base. Enter Cmdr. Powell(Burgess Meredith),script writer turned intelligence officer;Lt. Maggie Haynes(Patricia Neal),a nurse who sets her cap for Torrey;Ens.Jere Torrey(Brandon De Wilde),Rock's enstranged son;and his fiancée Ens. Annalee Dorne(Jill Haworth),Maggie's roommate. Those are the good guys. On the other side are the ineffectual Adm. Broderick(Dana Andrews)and his stooge,Cmdr. Owynn(Patrick O'Neal). The rest of the supporting cast is filled with such veterans as Henry Fonda(sporting a curious Southern accent),Franchot Tone,and many other names and faces who would become more famous in the following decades.Unfortunably,they're all saddled with a convoluted story that's so idiotically written it's unfair to judge the actors' work. For the most part,they do not embarrass themselves too much. More than any of the others,Wayne looks like he wishes he were somewhere else instead of being the lead character here. Still,the film is not without interest as an example of the cozy working relationships that the entertainment industry and the military enjoy in the years between World War II,the Korean War and Vietnam. The scenes that were filmed aboard real ships with Navy personnel look bright,shiny,and freshly ironed. Those recruitment poster excerpts stand in jarring comparison to the models used for the battle scenes and the pedestrian interiors. When the focus moves away from the fighting,as it often does,the story has much more to say about the early 1960's than the early 1940's. The sexual attitudes in particular are pure 1960's with an uncomfortable sniggering subtext that's never far from the surface. The absurd and convenient resolution of one seduction plot line is too bizarre to be described,much less believed. Throughout the film,the characters' emotions are exaggerated to unrealistic extremes.One clue to the bad writing comes in place names that were invented for the fictional campaign while the few scenes that suggest jungle combat don't amount to anything,and though the effects used in the naval battles may have some nostalgic value,they're certainly not going to engage and persuade younger viewers,who demand a certain level of authenticity in both visual and emotional terms that was common with the big-budgeted Panavision films of the 1960's. "In Harm's Way",despite negative reviews from critics and audiences who went to see this in 1965,became one of the top ten films of that year right up there with "Doctor Zhivago","The Sound of Music","Thunderball",and "The Greatest Story Ever Told".