Wake Island

Wake Island
by John Farrow

Wake Island
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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Albert Dekker, Brian Donlevy, Macdonald Carey, Robert Preston, William Bendix
Director: John Farrow
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 88 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-05-25
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Universal Studios

Movie Reviews of Wake Island

Movie Review: Wake Island
Summary: 5 Stars

One of the great movies of 'defeat' done in the 1940s to celebrate the heroism of the American forces overrun by the Japanese in the Pacific in the early months of WW2. It is very much 'fictionalised' and introduces the stock characters and heroic gestures that fill Hollywood war movies up to the 1980s about. An insight into the mood in which WW2 was perceived at the time. A precious piece of history!

Summary of Wake Island

Wake Island, a sandbar rising 21 feet out of the South Pacific, was among the first U.S. outposts to be hit by the Japanese, virtually simultaneously with Pearl Harbor. Wake Island the movie was among Hollywood's earliest responses to America's being attacked and drawn into WWII. The Marine Corps defenders of Wake became instant war heroes, akin to the martyrs of the Alamo. Nothing could be done to rescue or even to reinforce and resupply them, and they fought on through air attacks and naval bombardment for two weeks until, finally overrun, they were wiped out.

That searing historical context had a lot to do with the movie's impact in 1942, and the sight of the dark forms of enemy planes coming over the horizon for the first time still carries a shock. Wake Island's a decent film, and it doesn't dishonor its subject with sham heroics and grandstanding. But the New York Film Critics voted John Farrow best director of 1942, and that's a reach. The first half hour sets up the allegory of America as melting pot (there's even a corporal named Goebbels), establishes horseplay as the coin of democratic discourse (especially for gyrenes Robert Preston and the Oscar-nominated William Bendix), and fosters familiar friction between new commander Brian Donlevy and civilian construction supervisor Albert Dekker. Then shortly after a beaming Japanese peace envoy has stopped by for dinner, things get rough. The scenes of warfare are more than adequate, but they'd soon be outdone, sometimes in films much less worthy than Wake Island. --Richard T. Jameson

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