Men in War Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Men in War Blu-ray Movie Review

Yep, you guessed it, war is hell.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 6, 2014

Anthony Mann is often credited with having helped to reinvent the Western in more adult terms with his fifties’ collaborations with James Stewart. While that particular collaboration had ended in 1955 with The Man From Laramie, Mann continued to mine the Western genre for several more years, including 1957’s The Tin Star with Henry Fonda and Anthony Perkins. But another of Mann’s 1957 efforts sought to revisit another hoary cinema genre, giving it a “new” and ostensibly more realistic approach. Men in War takes an unflinching look at the problems infantrymen face in battle, in this case one day in the Korean War. The film met with some rather fierce opposition from the Department of Defense, for Men in War features quite a bit of psychological trauma, and not as “hygienically” as other, more obviously patriotic, efforts like Twelve O'Clock High. Add to that more than the usual amount of simmering discontent between members of a group cut off from their platoon, and it’s not hard to see why the reigning powers of the day might have looked askance at the film. This certainly not a jingoistic “rah rah” type of war movie, and in fact it evinces the same contrarian attitude that Mann brought to his western opuses, with conflicted characters and some unusual elements, including at least one (potentially more than one) shell shocked soldier, a complete disregard for rank and order, and, ultimately, a kind of futile quality as many characters are simply killed off as the story progresses.

Mann begins Men in War with a scene that almost plays like something out of The Twilight Zone. A scattered platoon of soldiers is spread out in various places on a seemingly peaceful hillside, with only the radio operator’s frantically whispered importuning to some unseen other group disturbing the silence, a group which is not responding. The commander of this ragtag bunch is Lieutenant Benson (Robert Ryan), who seems either preternaturally calm about the situation or perhaps simply too fatigued to work up much of a lather about it all. It soon becomes apparent the men are isolated, miles away from their rendezvous point, and suffering from the effects of a recent attack which has taken out their only mode of motorized transportation.

When Sergeant Lewis (Nehemiah Persoff) discovers that one of the men has actually been bayoneted to death during the night, he freaks out and raises a ruckus that finally brings Benson out of his stupor. When Benson’s mechanic, Sergeant Killian (James Edwards), tells him there’s no hope for the Jeep, Benson gets the guys ready to carry their equipment the fifteen or so miles to their rendezvous point. One of the guys, Corporal Zwickley (Vic Morrow), may be suffering from physical illness—or something more psychological, making any travel plans problematic.

The group does set off, however, but within moments they see what could be salvation—another American Jeep approaching from the distance. At Benson’s order, they prevent the Jeep from proceeding, something that makes its driver, a Sergeant nicknamed Montana (Aldo Ray), none too happy. Montana is trying to transport his Colonel (Robert Keith) to their rendezvous point, though it quickly becomes apparent that the Colonel is not in his right mind and that Montana’s mission may simply be to get his commander out of the battle zone.

Montana’s devotion to his commanding officer provides an undercurrent of drama in this section of the film, though it’s also a bit strange, considering that the Colonel is by and large catatonic, able to puff on a cigarette but little else. Benson is having none of it, and requisitions the Jeep. An attack by Korean snipers forces Montana back into the fold, but when he intentionally disobeys Benson’s orders not to kill a sniper they’ve flushed out of the brush, things seem set to devolve again. Only when Montana’s hunch about hidden weaponry on the Korean proves to be true is Benson willing to admit that Montana might actually be a valuable ally, despite his patently odd fretting over the Colonel’s state.

At this point, Men in War starts to bog down a bit, with a kind of quasi-Lost Patrol plotline that keeps the men isolated from support, allowing for scenarist Philip Yordan and Mann to spend a little time on the quirks of the various characters. (It’s rumored that Yordan actually didn’t write the screenplay, “fronting” instead for Ben Maddow, whom Yordan did front for on the subsequent year’s God's Little Acre, which featured a lot of the same cast and crew as Men in War). There’s an undeniable repetitiveness to this section of the film that may grate on some viewers, though the underlying tension of who is going to make it through the gauntlet does give things a certain dramatic edge.

Still, there’s a certain grittiness to the film that certainly distances it from the more pristine efforts of, say, the World War II era, where even the heroes barely got a scuff mark as they wended their way through enemy combatants. Ryan brings a nice, understaed gravitas to Benson, and Ray, who is always so good with surly brutish types, shows an uncharacteristically nurturing side as he tends to the Colonel (it’s notable that Keith barely utters any sounds—let alone words—in this role). The supporting cast is also excellent, with a fine turn by Morrow as a young, jittery recruit. (Trivia lovers may delight in the fact that the source novel for Men in War, while initially set in World War II and titled Day Without End, had been re-released in 1951 under the name Combat. Hordes of Baby Boomers of course grew up with Morrow playing a soldier on the long running series Combat! in the sixties).

A bittersweet ending sees at least a few of the characters surviving the climactic battle, with homage paid to the fallen courtesy of a final act of tribute by Benson, one which plays out to Elmer Bernstein's probably unfortunately sung title tune (no lyricist is credited, probably wisely). Men in War may ultimately not have the significance for the war genre that some of Mann's Western efforts did for that genre, but it's still an interesting character study of a group of guys struggling through only one day of what seemed like an interminable conflict.

Men in War Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

About 90% of Olive Films' Blu-ray release of Men in War, offered in 1080p and 1.78:1 via the AVC codec, looks great. The image is sharp, stable (aside from some very minor motion judder in a couple of pans) and clear, with excellent contrast, deep black levels and well modulated gray scale. But in what was probably the final reel of the film, things get decidedly worse, at least for a while. This sequence almost looks like it was sourced from 16mm at times, with much more abundant grain than the rest of the film, a softer image and really inconsistent contrast (see screenshot 17 for an example). The venerable Ernest Haller (Oscar winner for Gone with the Wind) lensed this film, and some of the framings are quite inventive (look at the first screenshot). While there are some passing issues to contend with here, this is another nice looking vintage film from Olive, one which shows no evidence of either aggressive denoising or sharpening. It may not have undergone much if any restoration, but what's here for the most part looks fine and certainly retains an organic appearance.

Men in War Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

While Men in War's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix is certainly listenable, it's at the low end of what we've come to expect from these Olive catalog titles. Plagued by omnipresent hiss, as well as ubiquitous pops, cracks and the like, the quieter moments in this film are never that quiet, if you catch my drift. On the plus side, Elmer Bernstein's sparse but effective music sounds fine, even if this Bernstein seems to be channeling another—namely, Leonard (no relation) and his 1957 score for West Side Story, notably some of the dance cues, which contain almost exactly the same sharp 11 (augmented 4th) chord structures and percussion as Elmer's main theme cue here. (Make no mistake—I am a huge Elmer Bernstein fan and feel this is just an odd synchronicity. Bernstein has written so many of my favorite film scores it's hard to even count. I've long wondered how in the name of heaven he was given an Oscar for his supposed "original score" for Thoroughly Modern Millie, when he hardly wrote a note of original score for that film, instead adapting standards and Cahn and Van Heusen's original theme, when so many other of his iconic original scores failed to net him an Academy Award.) Despite the hiss and crackling, dialogue comes through largely unscathed. Some of the explosions and gunfire are a bit anemic on the low end.

Men in War Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Mann was obviously out to reinvent the war film in his own contrarian image, and to a certain extent, he actually succeeds in that endeavor with Men in War. Had the film cut to the chase (and/or the fight) a bit more quickly and not spent so much time on repetitive issues with the various platoon members, the film might well have been a neo-modern classic. As it stands, it's a somewhat problematic but still rather engaging take on a venerable idiom that is notable for its grittiness and refusal to shirk from the horrors everyday infantry grunts had to face. This Blu-ray has generally great looking video, but somewhat problematic audio. Recommended.