They Were Expendable Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.5

They Were Expendable Blu-ray Movie Review

Holding Action

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 10, 2016

They Were Expendable (or "TWE") was director John Ford's first war picture for Hollywood, but Ford was no stranger to depicting combat on film. As a captain in the Navy Photographic Field Unit, Ford oversaw two World War II documentaries, The Battle of Midway (1942) and December 7th: The Movie (1943), both of which won Oscars. So committed was Ford to his work with the Photographic Field Unit that he initially rejected the offer to direct TWE, which was based on William L. White's best-selling account of the Navy's early battles against Japanese forces in the Pacific. It took the combined efforts of Medal of Honor winner John Bulkeley, a PT boat commander interviewed for White's book, and naval aviator "Spig" Wead, Ford's old friend whose biography he would later direct (The Wings of Eagles), to persuade the reluctant director to accept the assignment. Still, Ford's acceptance came with conditions, one of which was that Wead (and only Wead) write the screenplay. Thus began the pattern of involvement in TWE by military veterans whose hands-on experience guaranteed authenticity. The credits of TWE specify the rank of every cast and crew member who served, and the list is impressive. (Co-star John Wayne, who had not served during the war, would later admit to feeling like an outsider.)

TWE is an unusual war movie, because it chronicles a loss rather than a victory—and not a gloriously heroic loss like The Alamo. Released on December 7, 1945, the fourth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the film played to audiences who did not need to be reminded of the dark days when America's crippled Navy was driven from its Pacific bases by the Japanese onslaught. Ford's account celebrated the efforts of the dogged sailors and commanders who held out for as long as they could against a vastly superior force, then fell back as their positions became untenable. It's a stoic and unsentimental account of ordinary men doing their duty under impossible circumstances.

TWE is part of the MGM library now owned by Warner. The Warner Archive Collection has performed its usual exemplary work in restoring the film for Blu-ray.

TWE opens in 1941, just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. In the Philippines, the PT boat group known as the "Third Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron", is commanded by Lt. John "Brick" Brickley (Robert Montgomery, credited as "Robert Montgomery Comdr. U.S.N.R." and a former PT boat commander in real life). Brick's fleet has been assigned to fortify the island nation against a rumored Japanese invasion, but none of the top brass takes the lieutenant's "expendable" fleet seriously. They want to see powerful destroyers, not tiny wood boats. The same sentiment is shared by Brick's own second-in-command, Lt. Rusty Ryan (John Wayne), who is on the verge of requesting a transfer to a traditional vessel when word arrives of the Pacific fleet's devastation by the Japanese sneak attack. Throughout the remainder of the film, there will be hushed references to the U.S.S. Arizona, the battleship sunk at Pearl Harbor with over a thousand of its officers and crew aboard.

Even after Pearl Harbor, Brick's fleet isn't taken seriously enough to be assigned to anything but messenger duty. Perceptions begin to change after the PT boats are quick to respond to a surprise aerial attack, downing several Japanese planes. Despite these efforts, their base is destroyed by enemy bombs. The contrast between the commendable performance of Brick's sailors and the ultimate futility of their resistance establishes a pattern that will be repeated throughout TWE, as the combined U.S. and Filipino forces are steadily beaten back by a better equipped and better prepared adversary. In a signature scene that hews closely to history, it is the PT boat commanded by Brick that is accorded the sad honor of evacuating Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the senior American commander, along with his family ahead of the enemy's unstoppable advance. (The film ends with a title card bearing MacArthur's famous pledge to return, which he kept.)

Working in Key Biscayne, Florida, with the cooperation of the Navy and Coast Guard, Ford stages scenes of marine combat that remain impressive even by today's standards, as Brick's tiny PT boats demonstrate their mettle in delivering torpedo hits to Japanese warships. Each victory comes at a cost, with Brick's boats destroyed or damaged beyond repair until only a single craft remains. But the most moving passages of TWE occur between battles, as sailors and junior officers doggedly carry on with routine tasks of organization and maintenance, pausing to tend to the wounded, bury the dead and, every so often, steal a few moments of recreation. The sense of loyalty and mutual dependence that binds a disparate group of individuals into an effective military unit infuses every scene, even the light-hearted sequence where Brick hosts a dinner for a nurse, Lt. Sandy Davyss (Donna Reed), for whom Rusty has fallen while hospitalized for injuries. As the officers surround Sandy at the dinner table, the enlisted men gather below to provide musical accompaniment, and they look just as happy to be part of the adventure as the officers above who are enjoying the rare opportunity to dine with a woman.

TWE concludes shortly after the fall of Bataan, where tens of thousands of U.S. and Filipino soldiers were taken prisoner by the Japanese. With defeat now inevitable, Brick and Rusty are ordered home to begin training others in the use of PT boats against larger and less maneuverable opponents. Brick has succeeded in his quest to show the value of the wooden craft, but as is always the case in Ford's tough-minded depiction, the victory is flavored with bitterness. Due to a shortage of planes for evacuation, the two officers are ordered to leave their men behind. Ford stages their exit without speechifying, but he leaves no doubt that, of all the difficult tasks these two officers have performed, abandoning their unit is by far the hardest.

They Were Expendable Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

They Were Expendable was one of the last films photographed by Joseph H. August—or, as he is credited in TWE, "Joseph H. August Lt. Comdr. U.S.N.R."—who was a veteran of John Ford's Navy Photographic Field Unit and shot Ford's documentary The Battle of Midway. The film's original negative is one of many in the MGM library that no longer exists, but the studio created a fine-grain master positive in the Sixties as a preservation element. Even then, the negative had sustained so much damage that no 1080p master has been attempted until now. Previous DVD releases were made from a standard-definition scan performed in the Nineties.

For this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, the Warner Archive Collection has scanned the fine-grain master positive at 2K, followed by extensive restoration to repair damage, correct for fading and chemical staining and, in general, bring the film as close to the original as possible. The result is a stable and detailed image with solid blacks, crisp whites (those Navy dress uniforms!) and finely delineated grays that render Ford's carefully balanced frames with immediacy. Ford composed his images of military life and combat as deliberately as his Western vistas, and TWE's views of the re-created PT-boat docks and bases crowded with busy personnel are presented here with admirable clarity. TWE's Blu-ray is yet another demonstration of the remarkable ability of digital technology (in the right hands) to derive a finely resolved and film-like image from a compromised source.

They Were Expendable Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

TWE received an Oscar nomination for its sound recording, and WAC has restored that original mono mix from its earliest surviving source, encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. For a soundtrack of this vintage, the effects are surprisingly robust, with sufficient dynamic range to convey the peril of the battle scenes, as the tiny PT boats face off against machine guns from Japanese fighters and artillery from the battleships they are attempting to torpedo. Skilled engineers can create layers even in a mono track, and TWE's aural mix of splashing ocean, barked orders, gunfire and explosions is a worthy demonstration of the sound designer's art. In non-battle scenes, the dialogue is clear, even in scenes with multiple speakers. The score by Herbert Stothart (The Picture of Dorian Gray) conveys underlying emotion that the characters are too busy performing their duties to express. Stothart repeatedly references the Navy Hymn ("for those in peril on the sea"), as well "The Caisson Song", "Anchors Aweigh" and, at a key moment, "Red River Valley", which was Ford's favorite theme.

They Were Expendable Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only extra is the film's trailer (1080p; 1.37:1; 1:37), which has been remastered in 1080p. Warner's 2006 DVD of They Were Expendable was similarly bare.

They Were Expendable Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Commenting on TWE, John Wayne observed that Ford "was awfully intense on that picture and working with more concentration than I had ever seen. I think he was really out to achieve something". WAC is releasing They Were Expendable just after Memorial Day, which is an especially appropriate occasion to revisit the film. Highly recommended.