This action film set during the Korean war was filmed on an abviously low budget and focuses more on carnage than character. There are attempts to create some interesting characters, but they end up being more cliches, archetypes rather than flesh and blood living people. There's the officer with romantic issues who discovers as he goes onto the battlefront that the nurse he loves has been involved with someone else long before they met, fights between soldiers over issues of nonsense, the various wounded who express their desires or last wishes in maudlin scenes that succeed in desperation while reaching unusuccessfully to be profound. This is told through the narration of one of the officers (Scott Brady) who reads the script offscreen with gusto even though the on-screen acting leaves much to be desired. One great scene has a captured nurse truly giving a Korean officer a good slap when he makes a pass at her in the most disgusting of ways.
Of the ensemble, Robert Blake is instantly recognizable as one of the more troubled soldiers, The rest are buffoons, from the southern country bumpkin whose every word focuses on something involving hayrides or other stereotypical hillbilly traditions and the foreign cook who keeps talking about food as if he was a white version of Forrest Gump's friend, Bubba. The bumpkin soldier known as New Orleans has a goofy smile that never seems to leave his face and makes Gomer Pyle seem like a city slicker. They are annoying in their attempts to create some light-hearted moments, evidence of a desperate script rushed together without thought.
Blake is the only character who has any real evident humanity, but unfortunately, he has little to do. This is an unpleasant and graphic view of the enemy, showing the Asians as brutes and inhuman, only interested in carnage, not ending the war peacefully. Of course, all of the American soldiers and officers are presented as good. Each story that the film introduces doesn't really have any real dramatic strength, and it bogs the film down. It doesn't help that the film steals a ton of newsreel footage inserted to dramatize the situation further. All it succeeds in doing is demonstrating that this film was cheap looking and as unnecessary as the war it dealt with. And just when, at 70 minutes, you think all is going to be wrapped up, something starts up to keep the film going, another annoying element of this fizzing twizzler.
Of the ensemble, Robert Blake is instantly recognizable as one of the more troubled soldiers, The rest are buffoons, from the southern country bumpkin whose every word focuses on something involving hayrides or other stereotypical hillbilly traditions and the foreign cook who keeps talking about food as if he was a white version of Forrest Gump's friend, Bubba. The bumpkin soldier known as New Orleans has a goofy smile that never seems to leave his face and makes Gomer Pyle seem like a city slicker. They are annoying in their attempts to create some light-hearted moments, evidence of a desperate script rushed together without thought.
Blake is the only character who has any real evident humanity, but unfortunately, he has little to do. This is an unpleasant and graphic view of the enemy, showing the Asians as brutes and inhuman, only interested in carnage, not ending the war peacefully. Of course, all of the American soldiers and officers are presented as good. Each story that the film introduces doesn't really have any real dramatic strength, and it bogs the film down. It doesn't help that the film steals a ton of newsreel footage inserted to dramatize the situation further. All it succeeds in doing is demonstrating that this film was cheap looking and as unnecessary as the war it dealt with. And just when, at 70 minutes, you think all is going to be wrapped up, something starts up to keep the film going, another annoying element of this fizzing twizzler.