Watch The Purple Heart For Free

The Age of Commercialism

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

The movie is wildly uneven but lively and timely - in its own surreal way

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

I am going to do something I don't normally do. I am going to give this film two ratings as the quality and effectiveness of the film varies over time.For 1944 when this film came out, I'd give it a 9. It was an amazingly effective propaganda piece and must have done a lot at home to encourage the war effort. While there are some over the top scenes, the overall effect is a film that encourages patriotism and actually is more accurate in portraying the enemy than the typical war film of the era. I can easily imagine audiences of the time seeing this film and either enlisting or at least doing their best for the war effort after seeing THE PURPLE HEART.For 2008, this film is an interesting curio but you can clearly see that a few overly sentimental and over the top scenes do a lot to lessen its impact and convince audiences that the film isn't true--even though it mostly is! Individual details are far-fetched (such as the assassination scene and the Japanese soldiers dancing about and sword fighting like mad dogs) but this trial and the torture of the captured American fliers did actually occur following the Doolittle Raid.The biggest pluses in the film are the acting by most of the American crew members--particularly the fine effort by the always professional Dana Andrews--though the rest of the guys also were very effective. The biggest minus was that occasionally the film is a bit sticky with such obvious and over the top messages--it sure ain't subtle! Seeing this film remade today (and including the actual disposition of the men--which wasn't known in 1944) would make for an interesting film and would justify a remake.

Filmed in 1944 this movie has all the hallmarks of a jingoistic propaganda movie for the home front that was getting weary of the war. The racism and stereotyping is hardly subtle. A crew of a downed plane from the Doolitlle raid (the first attack on Japanese soil by the Yanks, all done to show the Japanese they were vulnerable) is put on trial for war crimes. They are tortured to reveal from where their raid originated. The Japanese Army wanted to humiliate the navy for allowing the raid (which came off American air craft carriers) and the men are pawns in the in fighting.The airmen are individually tortured off screen, and returned to their cells, all showing damage from the ordeal. Who will break? As this is a propaganda vehicle I'll leave you to guess if any of them do. In the end Dana Andrews gets to make a "we're coming to get you, you bastards" speech on the witness stand and the men are marched off to their doom.The acting is fine if overwrought. The script is clogged with "home sweet home" memories. Poems are recited, and battle hymns sung, and it's all too cloyingly ludicrous in 2007, or post 1970 for that matter. But I'm sure it left no dry eye in the audience, and it must have swelled the recruiting stations.Interesting is the fact that the crew is accused of bombing civilian targets. As if! No red blooded American would do that! Well we did. Not in this raid, but later in 1944-45. In addition to the 2 nukes we dropped we systematically, deliberately bombed major cities, causing fire storms and killing off 3/4 of a million Japanese civilians. As McNamara famously quotes General Le May, in "The fog of war": "if we lose we'll be tried as war criminals." We won, and the Americans marched on to the moral high ground!

The story of the fate of a captured American bomber crew from the first air raid on Tokyo. Dana Andrews final speech (taken from a Portugese reporter's news story) to the court is the most moving ever made in a motion picture. Purple Heart produced such a strong emotional response that it was banned in many American cities as detrimental to the war effort.

The Purple Heart was a very good movie for the times. The people who brand it "sappy" and "propagandistic", or the brain dead person who chortles about "patriotic lunkheads" enlisting in the armed forces because of this movie were not alive during that period. They know nothing about the horror of total war. The survival of this nation was in doubt, and men were dying or being captured by sadistic Japanese who murdered them while in captivity. Every parent dreaded the telegram delivery boy, thinking what it might mean. Ever heard of the Bataan Death March? This movie was a fact based story about captured Americans from the Doolittle raid, in which several American Airmen were tried as War Criminals, and some of them were executed. Such a show trial was not repeated, but it showed the beastiality of the Bushido warriors. Japan should hang it's head in shame. The performances were dead right for war time, and Dana Andrews was superb, there were few cliches, it was mostly truth. Mr Bartalotti was right, there was a great deal in a short time. A True achievement. For the silly few who worry about propaganda, remember we were at war, and remember Pearl Harbor.