On a War Movie scale of 1 to 10 this is 25: It’s all soldier, all the time.
The director has the best profile picture ever on IMDB:
And the movie is just about what you’d expect from seeing that picture: It’s brash, manly and filled with robust humour.
And as you’d expect, it’s not actually funny.
The depiction of the minutiae of soldiering seems very modern. Many of the scenes in this film could have be edited into movies from the 70s and nobody would have noticed (except for the hairdos and the the film stock).
Oh! I was totally confused. I was trying to spot Errol Flynn here and the only one who looked Flynnish seemed too young. But Flynn was only 36 when this movie was made: I was confusing Flynn with Douglas Fairbanks. D’oh.
Here’s a plot summary: Some soldiers are dropped into Burma and then they wander around for an excruciating 140 minutes of screen time. There’s nothing wrong with any specific scene, and it’s… admirable?… in its focus on the guys in the jungle…
But it’s hard not to start dusting the bookcase while watching this. Or, if you have a cat, vacuuming the cat.
If this had been half the length, it still would have been challenging to keep concentrated.
Perhaps it should have been six times as long? Then it’d have been a 70s art movie. It could have been a double drive-in feature along with Out 1: Noli me tangere.
Still! I kinda like it.
Objective Burma. Raoul Walsh. 1945.
Popular movies in January 1945 according to IMDB:
| Poster | Votes | Rating | Movie |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
3610 | 7.4 | Objective, Burma! |
 |
470 | 7.0 | Roughly Speaking |
 |
895 | 6.9 | The Jade Mask |
 |
973 | 6.8 | A Song to Remember |
 |
742 | 6.6 | The Great Flamarion |
 |
326 | 6.5 | Madonna of the Seven Moons |
 |
586 | 6.4 | Tonight and Every Night |
 |
246 | 6.3 | I Love a Mystery |
This blog post is part of the Decade series.