Pork Chop Hill (1959)

Strong and Moving!

Overrated

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

There are many war films, and yeah, there are both good ones and poor ones. This one, made in 1959 by Martin Landau and starring Gregory Peck is somewhere in the midst still leaning more to a weaker side. Why? It seems a cool winning formula - to depict a heroic Hill assault, long charge and then a long defense of the Hill. Yeah, but in reality the film is just one long, terribly slow battle scene that is getting tedious already after 30 minutes. Another obvious detail is that actors seemingly perform with a certain effort as if they were forced or simply do not enjoy their lines. It all seems to be one languid, idle and slow pacing attack that is a big bore and a huge yawn. The Longest Day, being made several years after this one, at least has a huge asset - psychological development of many heroes. Here we see caricature schematic Koreans, endless fight and idle remarks. Nice but passable

Pork Chop HillThe army names hazardous areas after food so starving GIs are inclined to invade.Prime example: the mouth-watering but highly lethal heap of dirt in this war movie.During the Korean War, a depleted US platoon (Rip Torn, George Peppard, Woody Strode) led by Lt. Clemons (Gregory Peck) is ordered to capture a contentious meat-shaped knoll that's currently being occupied by China's Communist forces.While he requires more support to fend off the Red multitudes, Clemons' government is unwilling to support him or withdraw his troops from the worthless mound.As an armistice is hammered out, Clemons and his boys hold off the hordes.A harrowing tale of bravery and stupidity, this 1959 depiction of the 1953 theater of war doesn't dismiss America's delinquencies in the bloodbath, but instead overrides them with glowing nationalism. Fortunately for famished troops, a McDonalds will shortly materialize on any property seized by the US.Yellow Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

This is one of my very favourite war films. I count this movie in the same company as "All Quiet On The Western Front" (1930)"The Cruel Sea" (1953) "The Dam Busters" (1955)"Saving Private Ryan" (1998)And "The Thin Red Line" (Also 1998).These for me are all seriously esteemed and important films and i put "Pork Chop" (1959) right up there with the best.It has mood (Black & White photography) deep in shadows and drenched with the fear of the darkness, it has the fog and muddle of war, the random nature of death, where luck is as vital as the will to survive. The value of self, the nature of courage, the call of duty, and more than a fair semblance of authentic action and historical place time and location.Maybe "Pork Chop" is perhaps a simple justification of the cold war (then Raging)and the assertion of the American WAY superior to all others. The American civil war and the war of Independence is referenced early in case some in the audience might just be a communist sympathizer. Gregory Peck plays the authentically real Lt Joe Clemons, with the honest sincerity of American values only he could ever portray to such a degree of believability. Is this a film only of its time. Off coarse it is, but that is the very reason i find it so captivating.

I gave this movie a rave review when I previewed it at a trade screening in 1959, commenting that director Lewis Milestone was still the master of action battle sequences and that the movie was brilliantly photographed by Sam Leavitt, an expert in difficult location cinematography. On a second viewing, however, the movie is not as impressive. The characters are ciphers. Although we critics often complain about the stereotyped characters and the all-too-cozy flashbacks of the typical war picture, that doesn't mean that they should be replaced by shadows. The Gregory Peck character is just too tight-lipped and we know little about him. Similarly, Woody Strode's cowardice and malignity are merely taken for granted and never explained. Ditto Robert Blake's confusion and heroism – an interesting blend and doubtless realistic, but still a shadow. Yet incorporated within all this enthusiastic realism, we get the unlikely coincidence of the brother-in-law! Milestone's gritty direction with its sweeping tracking shots over craters of dead, becomes the film's justification, but the script's overall anti-Chinese philosophy now seems more dated than the anti-German stance of All Quiet on the Western Front. For all its gritty realism, locations, black-and-white photography, lack of background music (enemy records are used very effectively), this movie is more a pro-American tract for the times, whereas All Quiet delivers a message for all time.