Objective, Burma! 1945. Directed by Raoul Walsh.

(8/30/01-9/1/01)

I generally don't like war films. I can't get interested in them and in consequence found Objective, Burma! hard to follow. But I do admire it for its raw, unvarnished look--it seems like a newsreel or documentary--and for Errol Flynn's performance.

Flynn portrays the hero, but without the poetry, the pagentry or the romance. We get right down to the bare bones--the essence--of his hero characterization and he shows us that it's more than just the trappings. Flynn is noble and courageous even without the swords, the cape--or Olivia de Havilland. There is not a single female character in Objective, Burma!

One thing I like very much about the picture is the way the characters become progressively more dishevelled. They really look as if the war is taking its toll on them. The faces become sweatier and lined with stress. Stubble appears on their faces. The film has a very down-to-earth look about it.

Not too much happens in the first part (first half?) of the picture. The men are dropped into Burma to blow up a radio station. It is a straightforward account of how they do this and I didn't find it all that interesting. It is when the plane can't land to pick them up and they become stranded that things become exciting. They are given up for dead by their superiors at one point.
There is a fascinating scene where the men come upon a Buddhist temple where a massacre has taken place. A place of peace has become a place of violence. And the final battle was certainly exciting enough. Objective, Burma! builds into a rousing war film.

George Tobias provides some appropriate comic accents. I'm not going to comment on the portrayal of the Japanese as all brutes because this was, after all, a patriotic war film made during World War II. "Consider the source."