Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Pork Chop Hill Blu-ray Movie Review

Meaty.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 29, 2015

The seemingly genetic patrician quality of Gregory Peck made him more apt to play brainy, articulate types rather than brawny action heroes. That may be one reason why Peck, an actor who suavely moved through any number of film genres in his long and vaunted career, never made that many war pictures. It’s notable that what is probably Peck’s best remembered World War II opus, Twelve O'Clock High, presented the actor not as a rabble rousing go get ‘em Type A personality, but rather a conflicted, psychologically scarred veteran attempting to come to terms with the rigors of battle and the inevitable attrition of his troops. While The Guns of Navarone would seem to present Peck in a more straightforward hero guise, even here he shows a certain intellectual acumen that sets him apart from many typical war film leads. And it’s certainly no mere coincidence that one of his later roles in a supposed “war film,” the title character in MacArthur, is a man who was, like Peck, seemingly genetically patrician himself. Pork Chop Hill is therefore a kind of odd man out in at least a couple of ways in Peck’s filmography, for in this outing Peck is indeed a grime covered lieutenant named Joe Clemons battling not just seemingly insurmountable odds in the Korean conflict, but also a kind of bureaucratic groupthink at the highest levels of command that seemed to view the rank and file as mere pawns being played in some global version of chess.

Pork Chop Hill lets the viewer know right off the bat that this is a film “ripped from the headlines,” albeit headlines that occurred some six years before the film’s production in 1959. Based on a book by (now Captain) Clemons, the film details the heroic efforts to capture one solitary vantage point which had ping ponged back and forth between the Americans and the Communist Chinese led Korean forces. Clemons knows he doesn’t have the manpower to accomplish the goal, but that doesn’t really resonate with his higher ups, who are involved in a kind of cat and mouse game with the North Koreans at a supposed “peace treaty” summit that has been ongoing for some time. In a way, Pork Chop hill becomes the Korean conflict in microcosm—an unwinnable conflict (one might even say quagmire) that may only be won through sheer determination and attrition, rather than by overwhelming force.

The peace talks provide a bit of subtext for the tension some of Clemons’ troops feel. As Sergeant Coleman (Norman Fell) mentions early in the film, he’s been reading the papers, which report the war is over. Meanwhile, Private Forstman (Harry Guardino) is certain he’s completed the requirements for this tour and wants to be rotated out as soon as possible, but the bureaucracy has him stuck in a kind of Korean Catch 22. But Clemons has his orders, and he gathers his forces—such as they are.

While Clemons fights seemingly insurmountable odds, the peace talks continue with both side seemingly fixated on Pork Chop Hill as some measure of their superiority. The Chinese and North Koreans want to hold on to it if for no other reason than to stick it in the face of the Americans, and the Americans likewise want to do much the same for much the same reason. The absurdity of the situation is not dwelt upon but rather referred to discursively, especially in the latter half of the film when director Lewis Milestone reverts to some American officers’ reactions as they leave the peace talk table in frustration over the Koreans’ intransigence.

Milestone was of course an old hand at staging war films, having tackled World War I with the classic All Quiet on the Western Front and World War II with the somewhat less well remembered The Purple Heart and Halls of Montezuma among others. He gets good, gritty performances out of a large (even ungainly) cast that includes a roster of future heavyweights in both film and television, including Rip Torn, George Peppard, Robert Blake, Martin Landau, Harry Dean Stanton and Gavin MacLeod. And the battle scenes, many of which feature technically complicated tracking shots, offer a kind of Korean version of the trench warfare on display in Milestone’s Oscar winning “Great War” opus.

The ironic thing is that even in 1959 the exploits that are depicted in the film sound like they had been largely forgotten. The film closes with Peck narrating a brief description of the heroism on the part of the Americans, something that supposedly in turn kept “millions” of people free as a result. While the political maneuverings that play out in the background of Pork Chop Hill may be one of the elements that sets this otherwise fairly straightforward war film apart from its battle weary cinematic kin, it’s the fighting scenes themselves that deliver a gut punch of realism. Peck even manages to look pretty darned authentic with a bunch of mud splatter arching across his elegantly patrician face.

Pork Chop Hill Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Pork Chop Hill is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.66:1. This is one of the nicer looking catalog titles from this era Olive has released recently, with the elements showing only relatively minor signs of normal aging and wear and tear. Those niggling distractions are more than offset by an appealing crispness to the imagery, aided and abetted by strong, consistent contrast and solid black levels. Detail is quite good even in busy action scenes, where things like individual droplets in water or discrete pieces of debris during explosions can easily be made out. Milestone favors close-ups on his actors quite a bit of the time, and fine detail is excellent in these moments. There are no issues with image instability, and as with virtually all Olive releases, there are also no signs of intrusive digital manipulation.

Pork Chop Hill Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Pork Chop Hill features a serviceable DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono mix that sounds just a trifle boxy at times, but which manages to deliver both dialogue and the onslaught of explosive sound effects with a surprising amount of nuance and, when necessary, force. Leonard Rosenman, usually a composer of rare intelligence and savvy, has a moment of political incorrectness in his first cue, offering parallel fourths to evoke a supposed "Chinese" (Korean?) sound in a blatant example of ethnic "Mickey Mousing." Otherwise, though, Rosenman's brass inflected score also comes through nicely on the track.

Pork Chop Hill Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements on this Blu-ray disc.

Pork Chop Hill Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Pork Chop Hill offers an unusually intelligent take on the war genre, perhaps one of the reasons Peck blends so naturally into the environment. The political machinations provide a bit of intentional absurdity in the background while a ragtag—and rapidly diminishing—group of Americans attempts to gain control of a hill for—well, for what, really? The old adage goes "war is hell," but at times Pork Chop Hill seems to suggest "war is patently ridiculous." The action scenes provide a rather riveting dose of brutality at times, and the character interactions all resonate with authenticity. While there are no supplements on this release, technical merits are strong and Pork Chop Hill comes Recommended.