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Walk in the Sun |
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Alongside larger-scaled epics, this 1945 drama looks modest, but director Lewis Milestone achieves a gritty realism that is ultimately closer to the truth of combat. A World War I veteran, Milestone had already created a classic war film--and powerful antiwar statement--in 1930's All Quiet on the Western Front, focusing on German troops in the trenches during "the Great War." For obvious reasons, A Walk in the Sun views the action from the perspective of American troops, but Milestone and a strong cast headed by Dana Andrews and Richard Conte prove remarkably clear-eyed in this chronicle of a platoon moving through the Italian countryside following the successful, but bloody, invasion of Italy. There's little of the cheerleading fervor or reflexive demonizing of the enemy visible in other films from the period; instead, the men's treacherous odyssey captures the sense of random chaos as their bucolic trek is interrupted by sudden skirmishes. We're shown the deep bonds forged between the soldiers, the loss of innocence that is the inevitable price of combat experience, and the capricious fates that can spare one soldier while exterminating another. Milestone would extend his mastery of wartime fiction to include the Korean War, captured in the equally fine, equally sobering Pork Chop Hill. --Sam Sutherland
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