Objective Burma [1945] - Region 2 DVD

A paratroop captain (Errol Flynn) sets out with a platoon to attack a Japanese outpost in the jungle. The Americans reach their target, take out the enemy with almost balletic precision, then gear up to return home. This feels like the point when a conventional war movie would have reached its action-filled climax, but the journey has only begun. Ahead lies one of the most arduous and agonising adventures any World War II film ever offered, brilliantly directed by that underrated old master Raoul Walsh and photographed with almost tactile realism by the great James Wong Howe. Franz Waxman also contributes one of his finest music scores. Flynn is excellent (he had given his best performance ever in Walsh's Gentleman Jim three years earlier), and he's backed by a solid cast including Henry Hull (as an ageing war correspondent), James Brown, William Prince, George Tobias and Stephen Richards (soon to change his name to Mark Stevens). Incidentally, two of the writers, Alvah Bessie and Lester Cole, were later blacklisted; see if you can spot any Commie propaganda. --Richard T Jameson