Sands of Iwo Jima (1950)

Sorry, this movie sucks

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

I saw this when it first came out. I must have seen it at least 30-50 times since. The ending always gets me and I tear up. Can't help it. Hope the younger generations see it and pay attention to the sacrifice they made for us.

In The Dukes top three movies along with "The Searchers" and "The Quiet Man". John Wayne was one of Hollywood's finest actors. He made the role one you could identify with. In "Sands of Iwo Jima" Sgt. Striker is a MARINE! He makes men out of boys. The Oscar should have been his. He is a man haunted by his past but it doesn't affect his duty to his men. Some may hate him but in the end they all come to respect him.

. . . Iwo Jima's iconic raising of the Stars & Stripes by U.S. Marines was the only thing which kept America from negotiating an early spring 1945 cease-fire with Japan (most likely such a capitulation on our part would have required us to give the Land of the Rising Sun a 50% market share of our automobile and personal electronics business in 1945; this horrific outcome was delayed three decades by our victory on Iwo Jima and Japan's Unconditional Surrender in the face of Nuclear Holocaust). Clint's hypothesis is impossible to prove one way or the other, but what IS a known fact is that John Wayne's SANDS OF IWO JIMA is the main thing that kept cost-cutting Congressional Republicans from DISBANDING the U.S. Marine Corps by 1950. Without SANDS, we could not have experienced FULL METAL JACKET, Charles Whitman, the barracks in Beirut, Lee Harvey Oswald, or Gomer Pyle. "Hoo-Rah" would not have become the catch-phrase of W.'s presidency, and we would have had to think twice about invading Iraq (or Grenada, for that matter). SANDS features the "Marine Hymn" sung or played off-and-on throughout its duration. The key phrase of this verse is "To keep our Honor clean." Thanks to SANDS, the USMC has remained on the job these past 65 years, just like those Tidy Bowl ad "scrubber bubbles," keeping America's Honor as clean as possible. It's sort of frightening to think of what our Honor would look like today if not for SANDS and our still-in-business Marines!

A ridiculous propaganda war movie with a hot-headed sergeant who enjoys nothing but to fight, clobber, duke it out with his soldiers whenever he feels like it without any repercussions. I was actually into the movie but after the 4 or 5th fight between Stryker and one of his subordinates, I couldn't get into it anymore. Certainly after Stryker (John Wayne) fights with Thomas (Forrest Tucker) and Thomas is fine with it, the two men talking to each other as if nothing had happened. The film's credibility, already stretched to the limit with the typical Hollywood war-time propaganda, was thrown out the window with that fight. Yes, Wayne is a manly man and I'm sure soldiers fight with each other but this was ridiculous, veering into the realm of fetish. I mean if your sergeant drags you in the middle of the forest and starts pummeling your face just because of some disagreement but then once the fight is over, the man at the receiving end doesn't complain and is fine and dandy with it, well, the homoerotic subtext suddenly becomes clear. The fighting, btw, is not shown as horseplay. Who cares about fighting the enemy with a sergeant like Stryker? This kind of behaviour wouldn't have been tolerated in reality but because this a John Wayne fantasy based on some real characters/events, well the machismo has be flowing in order to keep audiences entertained and what's more entertaining than seeing John Wayne getting his kicks and showing who's on, eh, top? Seriously underwhelmed by this so-called classic.