Objective, Burma! tells the story of an American Airborne platoon that is parachuted behind Japanese lines. Their objective is to destroy a critical radar site that could provide the Japanese early warning of a major allied offensive. The mission starts off well, but then decays in to a terrible ordeal.
My reaction to this film was mixed. I thought Errol Flynn was quite good. He takes a very understated stance this this film and it works quite well. There are some good scenes that are pretty edgy for the time. This film was made in 1945 while the war with Japan was still raging. Half the platoon is believed slaughtered in an ambush, only to later find that there were survivors who were tortured and mutilated by the Japanese. Popular characters, such as the newsman, are broken by the strain and die alone. The night battle on the hilltop at the end is good because it draws out the Japanese approach and shows both sides playing cat-and-mouse to get the other side tip its hand. Also, the film mentions both the Chinese and British as major players in the coming offensive. So it recognizes that we weren't over there alone.
On the flip side, the sort of corny jocularity that is present in a lot of old WWII flicks takes up a lot of space here. The platoon members really comes across as amateurish. The tension of moving behind enemy lines and the danger present in the supply drops were handled much better in "Merrill's Maruaders," a film that a lot of people see as basically grade B. The platoon also seems to slaughter vast hordes of Japanese, who are mostly portrayed as clueless and clumsy. The idea of splitting up the platoon behind enemy lines was pretty ludicrous. The captain would have been court-marshalled for that one! I think that Errol Flynn set the right tone for this movie and he was matched by some of the other actors. But the film didn't maintain this tone and I think it suffers as a result.
My reaction to this film was mixed. I thought Errol Flynn was quite good. He takes a very understated stance this this film and it works quite well. There are some good scenes that are pretty edgy for the time. This film was made in 1945 while the war with Japan was still raging. Half the platoon is believed slaughtered in an ambush, only to later find that there were survivors who were tortured and mutilated by the Japanese. Popular characters, such as the newsman, are broken by the strain and die alone. The night battle on the hilltop at the end is good because it draws out the Japanese approach and shows both sides playing cat-and-mouse to get the other side tip its hand. Also, the film mentions both the Chinese and British as major players in the coming offensive. So it recognizes that we weren't over there alone.
On the flip side, the sort of corny jocularity that is present in a lot of old WWII flicks takes up a lot of space here. The platoon members really comes across as amateurish. The tension of moving behind enemy lines and the danger present in the supply drops were handled much better in "Merrill's Maruaders," a film that a lot of people see as basically grade B. The platoon also seems to slaughter vast hordes of Japanese, who are mostly portrayed as clueless and clumsy. The idea of splitting up the platoon behind enemy lines was pretty ludicrous. The captain would have been court-marshalled for that one! I think that Errol Flynn set the right tone for this movie and he was matched by some of the other actors. But the film didn't maintain this tone and I think it suffers as a result.