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everything you have heard about this movie is true.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

When it was released in 1950, "Halls of Montezuma" was one of the most realistic and ambitious war movies yet made. Today its strengths still outweigh its unfortunate flaws. The flaws are an all-too-familiar sentimental streak, an absurd "revelation" about Japanese tactics, an unconvincing psycho in a clumsy explanatory flashback, and the unlikely presence, in Lt. Anderson's platoon, of a replacement who just happened to have been one of his high-school students in civilian life.Many viewers will find such flaws even more annoying because they detract from the good things about this movie, including some solid performances (Widmark, Palance, Boone, Webb) a realistic plot, an unusually authentic look--including some (mostly) well integrated combat footage--and a spectacular scope. Until "The Longest Day" (1961), the beach landing here(with flame-throwing tanks)and the later assault on the Japanese were more impressive than any other screen depictions of a large military operation. (BTW, the failure of the Japanese to oppose the landing itself isn't a Hollywood howler; the movie accurately reflects the Japanese defense strategy on Okinawa in 1945.) Milestone's directorial masterpiece, "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930), expresses revulsion at the slaughter of World War I. "Halls of Montezuma" affords a more complex view of men in World War II. The hero is a high-school chemistry teacher whose migraines have addicted him to painkillers; he doesn't care because he assumes he's going to be killed. One character is blinded and another killed by accident. By modern standards such incidents may seem relatively mild, but during the war such troubling images were thought to be too disturbing for film-goers. Even in 1950 they were strong stuff for a movie.Made at a time when the Cold War was heating up dangerously in Korea, "Halls of Montezuma" is still a revealing postwar response to World War II in the Pacific.

The hate content in war films which had up to this point been reserved mainly for the Germans was now temporarily re-channeled in the direction of the Japanese, and the Pacific War was revived in aggressive patriotism in films like Allan Dwan's "Sands of Iwo Jima," Fritz Lang's "I Shall Return, " Nicolas Ray's "Flying Leathernecks," and Lewis Milestone's "Hall of Montezuma." The focus of Milestone's film is the capture of a site on which the enemy have set up rocket sites… A Marine patrol is sent out, with orders to take prisoners and bring them back for interrogation… Much of the movie's appeal arises from its future ensemble cast… There is Richard Widmark, a former schoolteacher who fights the war with his head in a vice; Karl Malden, the medical corpsman who knows what psychological migraine is; Reginald Gardiner, the British-born sergeant, who can speak Japanese; Robert Wagner, the young radio man who kept pestering his fellow soldiers; Skip Homeier, the hotshot 'pretty boy' who is in a hurry to get home; Jack Palance, the protective and grateful boxer who wants his pal as his future manager; Richard Hylton, the student who handled fear once; Richard Boone, the desperate colonel who insists on taking prisoners; Neville Brand, the strong sergeant blinded during a bomb attack; and Bert Freed, the best fighter man but before and after "the no-good money burnin', gin-drinkin' horsehead…" All the characters solved their hang-ups with bouts of heroism, and Widmark was on hand to lead the last attack with a rousing battle-cry "Give 'em hell!"

One of the rare american war movies with a certain sense ofreality: Richard Widmark as a platoon leader conquering thepacific island of okinawa. From the long waiting time before theattack on the battleship, to the landing operation on the shores ofokinawa, to the painful losses of his men, we follow these seriouslooking americans. Their faces seem motionless and two of theofficers, including Widmark, have psychosomatic war syndroms.The killing is no fun in this movie, the dying is no fun to watch. All inall, not very entertaining, but a lesson in war, much more realisticthan later US-movies on the same topic.

Many war movies just following WWII were of the John Wayne tough guy type. However, Halls of Montezuma, is refreshing in that it looks in depth at the psychology of the soldier. Really at how men change when laying there lives on the line. The cinematography was also well done when you consider this movie was made half a century ago. You won't see the blood and guts as in a Saving Private Ryan, but the movie may make you think twice before signing up for active duty.