Battle Cry
by Raoul Walsh
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Aldo Ray, James Whitmore, Mona Freeman, Nancy Olson, Van HeflinDirector: Raoul Walsh
Brand: Warner Brothers
Cinematographer: Sidney Hickox
Editor: William H. Ziegler
Producer: Jack L. Warner
Writer: Leon Uris
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); Japanese (Original Language); Cantonese (Subtitled); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Korean (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); Taiwanese Chinese (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 149 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-05-13
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Movie Reviews of Battle Cry
Movie Review: Don't bother with this one...
Summary: 2 Stars
Much of "Battle Cry" seems to be built around dialogue between male actors and female actors decrying fictional relationships on the sound stages of Hollywood - Which basically makes it a soap opera.
The focus of Leon Uris' "Battle Cry" - the novel - was a study of Marines in training, on leave and in combat. The focus of "Battle Cry" the movie seems to be a tragic comedy of Marines in love trouble.
Nothing really happens during the course of the first hour and forty-five minutes that your average "Days of our Lives" fan wouldn't be interested in. The remainder of the movie looks like a lot stock film footage of Marines hitting the beach in amtracks. There's hardly any action, unless you like watching several hundred clueless-looking troops tromp around what appears to be Camp Pendleton with Van Heflin leading the bunch.
It's frustrating to watch - Which is not to say that this film is totally without merit: The best parts revolve around the Dorothy Malone character, who appears to have been outfitted with a high-lift bra that was obviously designed to pop some eyeballs out. In fact, her torpedoes are really out there. In my humble opinion, this aspect of "Battle Cry" should have taken up a greater portion of the film.
The screenplay is credited to Leon Uris, who I might add is a great writer, but I can't understand how such a good book was reduced to such a God-Awful mess. On the other hand, it probably would have been too expensive to recreate the book's descriptions of pacific island combat in explicit detail.
Semper Fi...
Summary of Battle Cry
Van Heflin, Aldo Ray and Tab Hunter in Raoul Walsh's hard-hitting-action epic of Marine Corps heroism in the WWII Pacific, based on Leon Uris' gritty best-seller. Year: 1955DVD Features:
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Other:Raoul Walsh profile
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The most interesting--and entertaining--aspect of this long, episodic World War II drama is that it marked the debut of one Justus E. McQueen, who subsequently took the name of the good ol' Arkansas boy he played in the movie: L.Q. Jones. He's only one of eight or nine Marine recruits who divide the screen time with commanding officer Van Heflin and James Whitmore as a lifer sergeant named Mac, "just Mac," who ramrods their squad and also delivers the movie's overbearing narration. Unfortunately, the narration is necessary to maintain continuity as the CinemaScope production galumphs its way from rounding up the melting-pot cast, to seeing them through basic training and sundry, mostly amatory misadventures in San Diego, to further training in New Zealand, and finally to baptism of fire on Guadalcanal.
Trouble is, among the recruits only McQueen/Jones (whose job is mostly comic relief) and Aldo Ray (as a brawling lumberjack who's never known family life) have any charisma or acting chops--and that's not forgetting Tab Hunter, whose matinee-idol status at the time does not speak well for the '50s. Battle Cry is also a cardinal example of Hollywood's penchant for buying big, lusty, profane bestsellers (by Leon Uris, in this case) and then euphemizing all the lustiness and profanity to appease the censors. Raoul Walsh, the poet laureate of lowdown gusto, does what he can in the circumstances, and as one of the first guys ever to direct a widescreen movie (1930's The Big Trail), he makes the battle scenes roar. --Richard T. Jameson
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