Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

The film follows war-time correspondent Ernie Pyle (Burgess Meredith) as he follows a U.S. infantry company from their bloody initiation at the Kasserine Pass debacle in North Africa to the liberation of Rome. Although Meredith and Robert Mitchum (Lt. Walker) are the film's nominal stars, they film is really about the soldiers, reflecting Pyle's journalistic focus on the men, not the war. Considered a very realistic depiction of war, much of the time the soldiers are walking though, or sitting in, rain and mud, griping about the army, dreaming about girls, and trying to stay as comfortable as possible under sometimes extremely ardous circumstances. The infrequent combat they see (mostly off-screen) is depicted as necessary but not heroic, and men just die, with no apparent greater reason or meaning to justify their individual sacrifice. Some of the events seem a bit implausible (the little dog, the wedding) but as the film is based on Pyle's experiences, they may have actually occurred (I have never read any of his writings). Considering that the film was made while the war in Europe was still being fought, it is surprisingly honest and downbeat. "The Story of G.I. Joe" is a must see for fans of the genre and there are a number of interesting observations made about its realistic portrayal of military life that are worth reading. Sadly, some of the 'extras' were U.S. military personal who lost their lives in the last months of the war.

"The Story of G.I. Joe" is a tribute to the anonymous grunts who made up the U.S. infantry during WWII. It's an odd film in many ways compared to other war movies of the time. It's light on the propaganda and morale boosting, and doesn't really even have a plot. It's rather an episodic series of vignettes that shows what a day in the life of an infantry soldier could consist of. It's even a bit surreal in the way that I imagine war can be, where one moment you're having a conversation about something mundane, the next moment you're dodging bullets and bombs, and the moment after that you're back to your mundane conversation. There's not a mission to anchor the plot, and there's no conclusion either. These guys just wander around, doing what they're told and never really seeming to be sure (or really care for that matter) what they're objective is. I imagine that also is very much the way war is for the average soldier.If you need main characters in your movies, I suppose those played by Burgess Meredith and Robert Mitchum will do, but this film isn't really about those two men any more than it is about any one of the other men. We get to know the soldiers the way another soldier in the company would, by one or two defining traits, not by any intimate knowledge of their inner lives. Makes it easier to say goodbye to them when they die.The always reliable William Wellman directed "The Story of G.I. Joe," and he gives it a realistic, newsreel look that's also very different from the usual studio sets of the era."G.I. Joe" was nominated for four Oscars in 1945: Best Supporting Actor (Mitchum), Best Screenplay, Best Dramatic or Comedy Score, and Best Original Song, for the short tune "Linda" that hauntingly is used in the film as part of a German radio broadcast designed to demoralize American troops.Grade: A

Not since All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) has the infantry got so down and dirty. If the men of Company C aren't eating dirt, they're getting soaked by God's own rain, or shelled from the heights of Monte Casino. I guess that's why they call combat infantry men 'grunts'. It's one heck of a dirty business as the men crawl up the Italian boot after the grudging Nazi's. I can see why they call it 'the fog of war'. No one seems to know what's going on beyond shooting at the enemy. No doubt about it, director Wellman did all he could to deglamorize anything smacking of Hollywood cosmetics. I can't help thinking GI mail got clogged with bars of soap after this movie.The treatment's one of the best from the war years. Everybody pretty much low-keys it in the emotions department, Mitchum especially. There's no theatrics, just guys trying to stay together and keep breathing. The scratchy record from home just about sums up the unspoken emotions. As good as the movie is, it's still within the limits of what could be shown during this Production Code period. In short, realism gets cut short in the blood and guts department, unlike, say, Saving Private Ryan (1998), where the gore flows freely. None of that here. Men die cleanly, but no less tragically. I'm guessing the captain's (Mitchum) death is not shown so that we're forced to hold our breath, while that long, long cadaver caravan passes by. It's a poignant end to the film, but not for the men who continue the slog up the Italian boot. Fine movie.(In passing—I guess the project was made before Ernie Pyle was killed by a Japanese sniper on Ie Shima. Here, actor Meredyth certainly appears to do him justice.)

The term "G.I. Joe" has become so closely associated with the image of a certain toy that it is now largely forgotten that it was originally coined to describe the ordinary American foot soldier. Likewise, it is now largely forgotten just exactly who Ernie Pyle was and what he meant to the American people and, more especially, to the ordinary soldiers about whom he wrote.My father took a photograph of Ernie Pyle in the Pacific in 1945, shortly before Pyle was killed. At the time Pyle was surrounded by a mob of admiring G.Is. You'd have thought they were in the presence of Bettie Grable or Rita Hayworth rather than a short, balding, middle aged newspaper-man. When Pyle was killed in action a few days later while accompanying the infantry, the solders erected a monument at the place where he died. On it were engraved the words, "On this spot the 77th Division lost a buddy", and they really meant it. It's inconceivable that troops today would do anything like that for one of the current crop of CNN-generation reporters.The reason isn't hard to fathom. Most war correspondents hung around the rear echelon, hobnobbing with the general staff and forwarding dispatches from headquarters, and they still do. Pyle, on the other hand, lived with and wrote about the common infantrymen who were actually fighting the war. He ate their food, drank their coffee and shared their hardships through three grueling years of war from North Africa through Sicily to the European mainland, and then later on in the Pacific, where he was killed. Pyle became the spokesman for the common soldiers, and all their families back home read his syndicated column. There simply wasn't anybody else like him then, and there hasn't been since.Small wonder that William Wellman, himself a combat veteran, thought that this movie needed to be made. The filmmaker had tremendous respect for his subject, and it shows. For example, that poignant last scene is, almost word for word and image for image, straight out of one of Pyle's most famous dispatches. It would have been interesting to learn what Pyle thought of this film. Unfortunately, however, by the time it was released the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter was already dead.