Watch The Men For Free

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Brando's first (cinema) movie, and it's a good one.An army officer, played by Marlon Brando, is shot in WW2 and left paralyzed from the waist down. He ends up in a Veterans Hospital for rehabilitation but he is incredibly bitter and does his best to isolate himself from the other patients.Quite original in that it covers a part of war hardly anyone ever writes about or thinks about - what becomes of the soldiers whose bodies have been irrevocably shattered by the war. Shows well the trauma and bitterness they face, and how the injuries affect them mentally. Also shows how it affects their relationships and other aspects of their personal lives.Brando is great in the lead role - you would not know that it was his cinematic debut. No Oscar nomination but he more than made up up for it with four of his next five movies, getting Best Actor nominations for A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata! and Julius Caesar and then winning the Best Actor Oscar for On the Waterfront. (Even the one of the five that he didn't get nominated for was great - a certain little film called The Wild One...).Teresa Wright (of Mrs Minever and The Best Years of Our Lives fame) is great as Ellen.Solid supporting cast.Not just worth watching because it's Brando's first movie, worth watching because it's a great, original, sensitively told and well- made movie.

The first thing that you need to be aware of when watching The Men is that it is NOT a war film. There are no explosions and outside of the first couple of minutes there are no guns being fired etc. If that's the sort of film that you're looking for then you should look elsewhere.The Men focuses on the after effects of paralysis on a group of war veterans. The main focus is on Ken (Marlon Brando). Ken struggles to accept his paralysis and seemingly shuns help from anyone - at the start of the film he's effectively a martyr. He even refuses to allow his fiancé to visit him - this may seem cold, but in some ways it's understandable when we learn that he was a very active person, he was a football player, a war hero. I suppose he wants her to remember him like that and he doesn't want her to pity him. However, his fiancé Ellen (Teresa Wright)still loves him even though he's paralysed and that's because she sees that he's still the same person that she fell for before he went to war.The thing I really liked about this film is the screenplay; it actually challenges the viewers thoughts and pre-conceptions. Ellen loves Ken in spite of his paralysis, but her parents and Ken's doctor try to talk her out of marrying him. The doctor reasons are more rational and relate to the practical cost and time involved in looking after someone with paralysis. However, her parents basically don't want Ellen to be with Ken because they no longer deem him to be the perfect son now that he's paralysed. Ellen defies her parents' wishes which wouldn't seem like much now, but was probably quite brave in 1950. It really was wonderful to see Ellen stick by Ken.Ken's character was also well-written in the sense that he's never made likable in such a way that we pity him (which is good because I don't think that was the effect that the writers were striving for). However, he's also never so repulsive that we end up hating him. The balance was just about right with his character.Another strong factor working in the film's favour is the wonderful chemistry between Ken and Ellen. They both put in terrific, heart felt performances which only helped to increase the appreciation that I have for this film.If you're a fan of moving dramas then this is definitely worth checking out.

The premise of the film appealed to me, and then I found out this was debut film for one of Hollywood's greatest stars, if not the greatest movie actor of all time, from director Fred Zinnemann (High Noon, From Here to Eternity). The film opens with the lead character Ken 'Bud' Wilozek (Marlon Brando) in battle, most likely how he got paralysed, that is what the story focuses on, a hospital for many other paraplegics like him. Basically Bud was to be married to Ellen 'Elly' (Teresa Wright), but after a year of being paralysed, he hasn't changed his mind on not wanting that anymore, and wanting to live pretty much in seclusion. Ellen does manage to find him, and she does talk him into make some changes, including more exercise, and I guess, trying to get walk again. Eventually, he decides to let him back into his life, and they do get married after all, there is a point where she wonders if she made the right decision, but don't worry, everything settles in the end. Also starring Everett Sloane as Dr. Eugene 'Gene' Brock, Jack Webb as Norm Butler, Richard Erdman as Leo Doolin, Arthur Jurado as Angel Lopez, Virginia Farmer as Nurse Robbins, Dorothy Tree as Harriet - Ellen's mother, Howard St. John as Ellen's father, Nita Hunter as Dolores, Patricia Joiner as Laverne, John 'Skins' Miller as Mr. Doolin, Cliff Clark as Dr. Kameran. Brando is extraordinary in his very first role, coming from Broadway, and Wright offers very good support as his fiancée, and the story has a lot of merit, a fantastic drama film. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay for Carl Foreman, and it was nominated the BAFTA Film for Best Film from any Source. Marlon Brando was number 30 on The 100 Greatest Movie Stars, he was number 11 on The 100 Greatest Sex Symbols, he was number 4 on 100 Years, 100 Stars - Men, and he was number 1 on The World's Greatest Actor. Very good!

Marlon Brando's first film role is a WW II veteran, who is seriously injured in combat, and the struggles he faces as he attempts to re-enter society. The normally competent filmmaker Fred Zinnemann's helming of Stanley Kramer expects that it is realistic because it depicts, in an upfront, unhopeful approach, with a subject simply denied at the time by the relative artifice of Hollywood. We are strongly informed near the beginning that there will be no phenomenon treatment for these paraplegics. We will thus be left without any sweetened anesthetic ending, any compromise being impermanent and burdened.This could have been a good film. But on top of being a horribly edited film, distracting with its conspicuous gaps in single shots among other disastrous flaws, it is a condescending attempt at a message movie. Depicting the post-combat lives of these paralyzed vets isn't enough, it seems, as the filmmakers stock so many characters full of philosophical spiels that are too generally observable to be portrayed as profound.