They Were Expendable (1945)

Best Avoided

USA
Feature Film
Director: John Ford
Writers: Frank Wead, William L. White
Cinematographer: Joseph H. August
Composer: Herbert Stothart
Cast: Robert Montgomery, John Wayne, Donna Reed, Jack Holt, Ward Bond, Marshall Thompson, Paul Langton, Leon Ames, Arthur Walsh

Ford’s insultingly noble war film is a well made but rather incredible tale, which manages to capture only the smallest traces of human nature, depicting a war in which lives are taken and lost without pain, grief, guilt, or fear; his is a morally certain world in which killing foreigners is only bettered by dying for one’s country – flag-wavingly depressing. Iain.Stott