Rating: - One of the best war dramas out there.
One of the most interesting movies that I always wanted to see was this movie. I thought Lloyd Bridges would play this troop dogging on James Edwards character, but come to find out that Bridges and Edwards characters knew each other as children, and though Bridges is accepting of him, the others are more cagey of him. A very interesting character study on a platoon of soldiers in a precarious and delicate situation. I wish it was on DVD by now but sadly, it hasn't made the transition yet. I was blessed to see it on TCM (Turner Classic Movies)some years back.
Rating: - "Coward, Take My Coward Hand"
Watched this one having read Donald Bogle's book and curious about James Edwards, MGM's first black leading man in the 1940s. Bogle paints Edwards as a dangerous rebel, skilled in New York acting techniques and like other newcomers to the screen, Brando and Clift, striving to bring a new realism to glossy studio confections. And in the period there seems to have been a shortlived interest in producing progressive, "social awareness" pictures that inevitably included racial struggle. All of the Hollywood studios made one or two apiece during a single year, and MGM turned out this one (along with ... Read More
