Sadly Over-hyped

Just perfect...

Good concept, poorly executed.

The acting in this movie is really good.

For me this movie goes back a long way!! I saw it when it was first released in 1957, in "Ann Arbor"!! I was 10 years old! "Ann Arbor", at that time showed only "1st" run movies!! Even back then, I felt that something was wrong with, the scene with "James Edwards" I was 10 years old, and I felt that I would have never done, what "Killian"(the part played by "Edwards"), would have done! I also saw this scene in saving "Private Ryan", with "Ken Vesel", remember?? Even in the "tv" series "combat", you see it again!! What it is,is a "reluctance", "inability" or,"outright refusal" to portray "black" soldiers in a positive, competent light!! But then again, "who was writing the scripts"!! If you know what I mean??!! I enjoyed the movie none the less, then and now!! I saw this movie at the "Michigan" theater, when it was first released in "Ann Arbor"!! Just as an aside!!

After viewing this movie and reading some of the reviews i couldn't keep myself from making a few comments.......when i was a boy i saw this film and thought it was great and scary........after actually having been in a war i realized how foolish it really is.......NCO's who act like children, soldiers who act as if they have no idea where they are and seem incapable of carrying out direct and simple orders, unbelievable behavior while attacking a fixed position....of course everyone is scared....that is common knowledge by now but it is not an excuse for failure.........as far as i could tell the technical director, john Dickson, may actually have been a 64 year old female war correspondent named Sigrid Schultz....what was that all about?.......I would have to come to the conclusion that Anthony Mann had very little to do with WWII and clearly never had a clue what soldiering was all about.Clearly, Anthony Mann was adept at character development but there are some genres of film where factual believability is just as important.......he could get away with over characterization in a western maybe........even though a bit too much for my taste......but not in a modern war film.......this movie was a lot more like a twilight zone episode than a war film......even the music was rod serlingish if you ask me.

(Some Spoilers) It's September 6, 1950 and war is raging all across the Pusan Peninsular in South Korea. In the previous 72 days of bitter fighting the US military has already lost 5,685 men killed and missing as well as 15,000 to 17, 000 wounded. With the US and it's South Korean allies' back to the sea and facing utter destruction from the advancing North Korean infantry and amour divisions a US infantry unit lead by Let. Benson, Robert Ryan, is desperately trying to reach it's main company at hill 465 some six mile away. It's then out of almost nowhere that a US jeep carrying Sgt. Montana, Aldo Ray, and his battalion commander he Colonel, Robert Keith, unexpectedly arrives.Right away there's friction between Lt. Benson and Sgt. Montanna. Sgt. Montana dislikes taking orders from his superior officer Lt. Benson whom he feels is not up to the job at hand in bringing his unit back across North Korean-enemy-lines. This is complicated by the Colonel who after suffering the shock of getting hit by a North Korean stun grenade has completely lost it and is now just a shell of his former self. Having no choice but to work with each other in order to survive both Lt. Benson and Sgt. Montana make their way back to hill 465 fighting off North Korean snipers and artillery bombardments along the way. That's until they finally get to hill 465 where the North Koreans, who had since captured it from the defending US infantry, have a big surprise waiting for them!Hard hitting Korean War movie with both Robert Ryan and Aldo Ray at their gritty best as battle weary GI's doing their best to survive the war and at the same time save the men that their in charge of along with them. There's also the touching story of Sgt. Montana and the Colonal who are the only survivors of their battalion that was annihilated, off camera, by the North Koreans. Feeling responsible in getting the colonel, who treated him like a son, to the safety of a US military hospital field unit Sgt. Montana constantly risks his life as well as his fellow GI's in trying to get him there.***SPOILERS*** Losing more then half his men Lt. Benson finally makes it to hill 465 only to find it crawling with North Korean infantrymen. In the ensuing battle for the hill the Colonel suddenly comes to life and to the shock of Sgt. Montana takes it, with a submachine gun, straight to the enemy! Thus making it possible for Sgt. Montana Lt. Benson and the last surviving member of the unit Sgt. Riordan, Phillip Pine, to dislodge the North Koreans. It also in the end cost the Colonel's life but in this case unlike in the rest of the movie, where he was more dead then alive, he gave a good account of himself!The film "Men in War" shows the futility of what was the War in Korea for both the US as well as North Korean and later Red Chinese servicemen who fought in it. It also showed at least in the case of Lt. Ryan and his men how they were motivated to both fight and survive that war not for any political or moral reasons but for just their own self preservation and nothing else.

'Men in War (1957)' had been sitting on my video shelf for quite a few months, but I was very interested in watching it. Anthony Mann, generally known for directing Westerns, here avoids the conventions of his favoured genre, and a brief glimpse of the opening scene had promised a stark, realistic war-time drama, unconcerned with patriotic gallantry and instead focused on the psychological torment of being exposed to continuous conflict. My expectations were, for the most part, excellently met. In a wonderful year that included stunning war pictures from Stanley Kubrick, David Lean and Mikhail Kalatozov, 'Men in War' manages to hold its own, despite what was likely a comparatively low production budget. Part of the film's merit lies in its focus on characters. There are, in fact, two "wars" at play in the film: between the American platoon and their faceless Asian enemies, and between feuding soldiers Lt. Benson (Robert Ryan) and Sgt. Montana (Aldo Ray), who must construct a tentative alliance if they are to emerge intact from enemy territory.In 1957, Stanley Kubrick released 'Paths of Glory (1957)' which featured perhaps the most spectacularly realistic scenes of warfare until 'Saving Private Ryan (1997).' Mann's film, produced in the same year, strives for a more modest brand of realism, one less concerned with fireworks than with isolation punctuated by the unexpected threat of danger. In most WWI and WWII pictures, the major battles are played out amid gunshots and canon-fire, exploding earth and dying soldiers. The Korean War (1950-1953) presented American soldiers with a new kind of conflict: guerrilla warfare. Lt. Benson leads his platoon through enemy territory in an improvised retreat, and, at times, it even seems as though the men are engaged in a peaceful forest hike – the unbroken silence is not unnerving, as it probably should be, but deceptively reassuring. One soldier (James Edwards, the pioneering African-American actor from 'The Set-Up (1949)') even appears to forget his circumstances entirely, lulling himself into a false sense of security that is sharply and inevitably encroached by a silent enemy ambush.Robert Ryan is ideally cast in the leading role, bringing to the character his characteristic intensity, world-weariness and self-doubt. Though undoubtedly a dedicated leader, Lt. Benson finds even his own resolve cracking under the pressure of seclusion and imminent, unseen peril. Even more interesting, however, is Aldo Ray as Sgt. Montana, who would be a selfish, dishonourable scumbag if it weren't for his unwavering devotion to a shell-shocked colonel (Robert Keith), and his meticulous knowledge of enemy tactics. The remaining soldiers, including Vic Morrow and L.Q. Jones, are unfortunately relatively anonymous characters, and their eventual dispatching is mostly without emotion – or perhaps by then we've simply become so hardened to the prospect of death that we can't feel anything. Though the obligatory heroic ending strays onto the beaten track, I was mostly impressed with how 'Men in War' generally avoided clear-cut heroics. The soldiers killed by enemy attacks are betrayed by unlucky circumstances or momentary lapses of judgement; even the final assault on an enemy stronghold seems almost pathetically inadequate.