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Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Robert Mitchum plays Colonel Steve Janowski--an infantry genius who is stationed in South Korea just before the outbreak of the Korean War. His job is to help train the South Korean Army to defend their country in case of invasion...something that occurs in the first few minutes of the film. The story consists of either the Colonel and his Staff Sergeant (Charles McGraw) in combat or the Colonel chasing a pretty UN worker (Ann Blyth). Generally, the film is well made and the action sequences good, though the overuse of stock footage is a problem common to many war pictures. The viewer might also be surprised because it's a surprisingly bloodthirsty and brutal picture--with footage of charred corpses and the like. Not a war picture for the squeamish, that's for sure...but very well made and acted.

In 1999 there was a big to-do about a supposed atrocity during the Korean War, the strafing of civilians fleeing fighting during the initial push by the North Koreans down the Korean peninsula at No Gun Ri. It turned out that the main eyewitness for the story was a liar who was not even in in-country in 1950. The fuss would have been no surprise to viewers of this movie. Here it was artillery fire rather than air attack that caused civilian casualties, but the situation was basically the same. The film depicts the sad necessity of firing on a column of refugees, driven at gunpoint by communist soldiers hidden among them in civilian clothes, who were trying to get past U.N. lines. The blame in the movie is clearly on the commies, but there is no attempt to gloss over the ugly necessities of war. This movie was the first time I ever heard the phrase "Fire for Effect", a phrase I was to utter myself frequently years later as an artillery officer in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Or possibly We Were Soldiers? Surely this must be one of the movies that made a deep impression on Randall Wallace when he was a kid. An early 50's war movie from the slobbering right. The UN didn't fare any better in their minds in 1952 than it does now. Mitchum takes on The North Koreans with two pumped up right arms, demonstrating one minute to zero patience for the dovish views of UN worker, Ann Blyth, but falling in love with her and converting her all the same. In fact, all it takes for her to see the light in mitchum's soul is to see him shell civilian refugees into kibble then justify it because 'half' of them were communist infiltrators anyway.what a ridiculous piece of propaganda. Sure, wars need to be fought, that is indisputable, but not in every case, and war movies should never be so blindingly simpleminded and stupid, pandering on behalf of the Pentagon to the lowest brow audience for support. This is strictly the kind of post WW2 arrogance movie that made right wing war lovers what they are today. Let's just kick ass and shut up the pansy eggheads with a kiss, because we're the real men and war is necessary everywhere all the time. Kicking ass is what God made America for, talk is for lovers, and a machine gun and a box of ammo is the ONLY solution always.Interesting that it was a war entered into by a left wing President. The Right Wing no doubt loved him for it, taking on those commie gook cousins of Uncle Joe.Until he canned MacArthur.Brash American machismo doesn't begin to sum up this film. Fetish porn for freeps and muscleheads. It stars three of my favorite actors too. Robert Mitchum, Charles McGraw and Richard Egan I would watch in anything. This just proved not everything they made is worth a damn.

This wartime drama falls a little flat in spite of a very talented cast. The rugged Robert Mitchum is in charge of evacuating American civilians in Korea, but ends up bombing refugees. War action is paced with heavy romance between Mitchum and Ann Blyth. This couple all but ignites the screen. Pretty hot for the early 50s. Also in the cast are Richard Egan, William Talman, Eduard Franz and Margaret Sheridan.Note:This movie is directed by Tay Garnett, whose work is better shown in THE CROSS OF LORRAINE(1943).