A Masterpiece!

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Samuel Fuller had fought in the Second World War and put his field experience to good use in directing this low budget film set in Korea during the Korean War. The story is simple. A major general in charge of an American division is forced to order a tactical retreat of his division across the only existing bridge over a major river, which he will then blow up behind him. In order to avoid the enemy massacring his 15,000 troops as they slowly make their way across that choke-point, the general decides to leave a small platoon of 48 soldiers behind, commanded only by a lieutenant, to make a lot of noise and fire a lot of weapons so that the enemy will not know for some time that the division has pulled out. This platoon, known as a 'rear guard', will thus buy time for the division, and then they can follow after a certain number of days, if they can. The action is set in the snow-covered and freezing mountain environment of that terrible war. (A friend who fought in it told me the worst thing was the cold, far worse than the fighting.) The action of the film is thus circumscribed within this narrow story, in a small mountain pass where 48 men face an entire enemy division complete with artillery. Richard Basehart plays a corporal who, as fourth in line of command, ends up becoming the commander of the platoon when the three men outranking him are all killed. He has an inner struggle about responsibility, and that part of the film is a psychological profile of a man who fears command and also cannot bring himself to fire a gun at another human being. So Fuller is driving home some important truths about what war really involves, namely killing people (a point often forgotten by politicians in their bubbles!) There is a tense scene where Basehart has to walk into a minefield to rescue someone, trying to feel gently through the snow with his boots where the mines might be. (The medic who had proceeded him in this effort had already been blown up by a mine.) I had a friend named Michael Scott who during the Second World War went into a minefield to save his friend Carlos Blacker, and lost an eye, so I have heard some first-hand accounts of this tricky subject. Early on in the film, when the enemy are firing artillery at the platoon, they blast away at a cliff and a rock-fall reveals a handy cave, in which the platoon is able to shelter from the cannon fire. I winced as I saw the soldiers knocking the stalagtites down inside the cave, despite one of the soldiers saying it had taken 2000 years for them to form. I know it was only a set, but the idea of damaged stalagtites offends my geological sense of the proprieties. This film was 'suggested by' a novel by the British author John Brophy. Brophy was from Liverpool, who also wrote a novel and screenplay for the film entitled WATERFRONT (1950), which tells a tragic tale of the Liverpool slums, from which Brophy presumably came himself. There is some good acting and a lot of grit in this simple war film, which concentrates on this small body of men and their struggle against the odds. The film has been restored and included in the 'Maters of Cinema' series on Blu-Ray, as part of the current revival of the films of Samuel Fuller, whose PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953) is probably his best known film. I need hardly point out that 'fixed bayonets' refers to the time when close combat is at hand, and soldiers have to fix bayonets to the ends of their rifles to defend themselves against the enemy, as firing is no longer possible because the enemy is only a few feet away. Bayonet fighting is probably every soldier's worst nightmare, and it is not much different from what warfare was like a thousand years ago, i.e., two men struggling against each other to the death with only sharp blades to decide who lives and who dies. Makes you want to join the army, doesn't it?

The war was still going on. No one, especially MacArthur, knew WHAT was going on. I spent a year in Korea and when I came back I asked my brother a lot about his experiences. He was in the 1st Cav which spent most of it's time running South and East towards Hungnam and pulling the 1st Marines out of the Changjin debacle after their mentally challenged commander refused to retreat and was cut off. I then began to study that war. My conclusion about this movie; it is as factual as Hollywood's movies about the Earp brothers, Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, et al. In other words, it was as much about the real Korean war as it was about life on Mars. The screen writers knew nothing about the war so they made up one. A God-awful grasping at sophomoric conjecture. An insult to the men from the 16 allied countries who served there.

***SPOILERS*** Storming across the frozen Yalu River in Manchuria a force of some 300,000 Red Chinese troops cut to ribbons the UN/US forces fighting in North Korea. By the end of November 1950 there's nothing left for the allies to do but bug out and move south with their battered divisions across the 38th Parallel into South Korea in order to avoid being encircled and annihilated by the Red Chinese and their North Korean allies.With the Red Chinese putting up road blocks and having sniper teams take up the high ground around the escape routes the US Army and Marines are left to fight their way to safety across the Ch'ongch'on River in order for them to survive the Chinese brutal winter offensive. Using a US infantry platoon of 48 men for cover it's decided that they trick the advancing Chinese Reds into thinking that their of regiment strength, some 1,500 men, so the rest of their US infantry division can cross the Ch'ongch'on before their massacred by the Red Chinese Army.The US Army platoon lead by Lt. Gibbs, Craig Hill, has its work cut out for them but incredibility is able to hold the Chinese off due to them thinking that their up against a much more superior force. This has the confused and cautious Chinese hold back their armor, tanks, in reserve for the big break-out. It's when the Red Chinese sniper teams start to pick off the defending GI's that they realize just how weak and undermanned they really are. It's then that the Chinese Reds start to bring in the armor and heavy artillery and that's when things really start getting deadly serious for the US platoon.With the battle hardened Sgt. Rock, Gene Evens, rallying his men on they desperately hold off the Chinese as they try to give the rest of their division time to get across the frozen Ch'ongch'on River. With both Lt. Gibbs and Sgt. Longren, Michael O'Shea, killed in the fighting the meek and conciseness, in shooting anyone, Cpl. Denno, Richard Basehart, is now a heartbeat away from taking charge of the platoon. This in Cpl. Denno's mind is the last thing he wants and knowing that Sgt. Rock's luck was running out, in all the chances he's been taking, it was what Cpl. Danno eventually ended up getting.The second of director Samuell Fuller Korean War movies made in 1951, at the hight of the war, with Gene Evens again as the tough and pragmatic squad leader Sgt. Rock very much like the role he played as Sgt. Zack in Fuller's unforgettable war classic "The Steel Helmet" released earlier that year. Even with a limited budget Fuller was able to make the battle scenes far more effective then in much more bigger budget war movies released at that time. The GI's who are holding up in a cave almost completely surrounded by Chinese troops try to make a dash for it, thinking that the rest of their division had made it to safely, across the Ch,ongch'on before their cut off and cut to pieces.With Cpl. Danno now in charge, Sgt. Rock was killed by a sniper bullet, he loses his phobia of not being able to fend for himself by gunning down at point-blank range a Red Chinses scout leading an infantry, with a tank in the lead, squad to the GI's cave hideout. With all hell breaking loose the remnants of the decimated platoon make a run for it to the frozen Ch'ongch'on River not knowing if the rest of their infantry division or the Red Chinese Communist made it there first!Superior war film that shows what war is really all about by not trying to glamorize it with false and Hollywood-like heroics but with hard cold reality. At no point do we get the impression that anyone in the US Army platoon is anything but a GI trying to make it through the war in one piece. No one not even the fearless and I don't give a sh*t Sgt. Rock tries to be a hero by risking his life recklessly in order to prove his manhood or courage. The meekest man in the platoon Cpl. Danno ends up being the real hero of the movie but only because of circumstances beyond his control not because he wanted to be one.P.S The film "Fixed Bayonets" is also the very first movie that actor James Dean appeared in. We get to see a 20 year-old and hooded James Dean at the very end of the movie as he's seen coming out of the woods and linking up with his fellow GI's on the banks of the Ch'ongch'on River. Exhausted and frost bitten Dean excitedly tells them, in regard to the retreating members of his combat division,"I think I hear them coming".

I have only recently seen some of Fuller's films after hearing about him for years. I have been surprised and pleased by each one. "Fixed Bayonets!" Is a great example of how Fuller made the Hollywood system of the time work for him simply because he got films done on time and on budget, (I think). What would have been either a "GungHo" movie or a trite rehash of "Red Badge of Courage" becomes an involving and action packed story of a man becoming a soldier and leader, something Fuller had first hand experience of in WWII. If you have heard the expression "dogface" applied to a soldier and wondered what it meant this picture will provide your answer. Fuller uses the closeup in just the right amount and just the right time here, and the closeups put the finishing touch on each of the characters, all of whom are distinct and varied. Instead of seeing soldiers similar to others films, these men come across somebody you might know as a regular guy.Anyone interested in putting stories on the screen should see Sam Fuller's work.