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136 Shorter Reviews
the soldiers were really like and so we are given little vignettes of men and their emotions and their frequently inane conversations. The film is, in short, an attempt at reportage, but it cannot escape all of the Hollywood cliches. The "typical" dialogue manages to ring trite and false. Although the picture is not sentimental in the ordinary "war movie" sense, it seems dishonest in its lack of atypical behavior and in its absence of irony. Milestone tried to show what kind of person the American soldier was, but there are too many evasions in the script, too many "tough" guys who are too brave to "chicken out". It lacks the sharp realism and cruel ironies of Bill Mauldin's cartoons which kept them from becoming either sheer carping or mere boy-scoutism. In short, Milestone's film is corny in spite of itself. The men seem to have the emotions and maturity of a high school football team. No one seems really
to worry about the idea of death, no one examines the problem of peaceful men who must fight, no one questions the morality of the war, and no one worries about what his wife is doing home. Knowing the awkward way Hollywood deals with any ideas, we may be grateful that Milestone didn't have them dabble further in the realm of ethics. But how can one show the American soldier honestly and pretend to be "realistic" without depicting anyone who is even moderately intelligent or to dig just a bit below the patriotic spirit that seems to pervade the film? What happened to all the goldbricks? Apparently they're mustered 3ut of the Hollywood platoons.
There is an attempt, however, to furnish an "intelligent voice" amidst all the mediocrity, and so the film is flawed every few minutes by a "sensitive" but reassuringly squarejawed fellow who tiresomely composes letters out loud to be sent home. Besides functioning occasionally as exposition, his comments, invariably so turgid and sophomoric as to be embarrassing, verbalize what is already obvious to the viewer. When the sergeant gets hysterics, our vocalizer walks near the crying body and says that there are many kinds of wounds in the war: physical and mental. The sergeant has a mental wound, he concludes. His vacuous remarks only succeed in slowing up the action, weakening the drama, and making the film pretentious and self-conscious. This verbal letter writer and a semi-poetic ballad from which the film gets its title can not transform shoddy material — in spite of the virtuous intent — into an art work. One is faced only with a facade of honesty and sincerity, and not these qualities themselves. The little conversations between the men were intended to be the meat of the film, but because of their ineptness they appear merely as painful padding between one scene of action and another.
A Walk in the Sun is worth seeing as a socio-historical document, but except for the few scenes when Milestone foregoes ersatz conversational reportage, it is hardly the aesthetic masterpiece it tried to be.
{Contemporary Films)