Wow! Such a good movie.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

A Walk in the Sun lacks intensity of Lewis Milestone's masterpiece All Quiet on the Western Front. In fact there is too much jaw jaw as the platoon soldiers chat among each other while walking.A platoon lands in Italy with the object to take a Nazi held farmhouse, their lieutenant is injured and it is up to the platoon's sergeants to lead them further and achieve their aims.This is an unsentimental look at the life of the infantrymen, we get to learn about their background and what makes them tick. The trouble is it's all a bit dull. The film has a solid cast but I felt they could had done with more snappier and profound dialogue.

This rotten tomato got the axe at the 26 minute mark ... when some bozo rattles off about the 1955 battle of Tibet for the 3rd time (movie takes place in 43). This is seriously one of the worst WW2 films I have seen ... and I have seen many! On the boring meter it sits atop with the French film "A Man Escaped" ... which was at least artistic.Seriously 90% of the film is idle chatter and that does not make for a good film. More so you can tell that very little money was spent on the film ... it is borderline amateur. Finally the singing narration ... that may have been a good idea in 1945 but it torpedoes in 2015.I could tell this film would get the gong within the first 5 minutes ... yet I tried to hang in there ... thinking it may pull up from the dive ... it did not. Don't waste your time.POST: I cannot believe our boys were such morons as the men portrayed in this film were. This was my parents generation and very few were this simple.

A Walk in the Sun (1945)The first third of this film is amazing. It' remarkably disturbing and dark, about a bunch of soldiers landing at night in Italy, World War II. The sun does eventually rise, but it's an eerie and claustrophobic and surprisingly gentle twenty minutes. The cast is really perfect, without any overly macho guys, just some ordinary men with feelings, feelings for life, for each other little by little, and for a kind of fatalistic fear that turns into acceptance at times, until events force them into action.Once toward halfway, the movie becomes a more conventional, a large rambling group of foot soldiers a bit lost as to what to do as they walk along, in the sun, in Italy. They talk without a lot of open fear, including a bit of chitchat even as they confront enemies of one kind or another. There is an air of ordinary resignation through it all, as if the movie makers knew the audience could only handle a kid gloves kind of truth about the war, which was still raging when it was released. Even though there is an inevitable sense that the Americans were winning (they were landing in Italy, not being pushed off to sea), there is also the sense that these really nice guys might die, suddenly, because of events beyond their control.By the final third a military objective clarifies, a small one, but a potentially deadly one. When it plays out, it's more about war, and winning. The enemy is never shown, and the brutality is limited to the last two minutes, but it's a devastating two minutes, and probably too difficult for audiences to watch at the time while the war was going on. Though filming was finished in January 1945, the film wasn't released officially until December, with six months of peace already healing some of the wounds, and didn't see wide release until the following year, long after war films had stopped being made. Director Milestone did get Army approval for the film in 1945, and it does seem accurate in its awfulness, even now. It's right before the climax that the film returns to it extraordinary, inner conscience, following Dana Andrews crawling though the weeds to the farmhouse they intend to overtake. How long would it take to crawl around the world? A hundred years? A thousand years?For the best this film has, it's essential, a major piece of war filmmaking.

I just bought this on a bargain rack, due to the stellar cast that was listed on the jacket. Unfortunately, the movie never really seems to take off. The incessant dialog between the characters would be acceptable if it were in any way compelling, but it is not. Mostly small talk and whimsy. It is understandable that guys involved in a war talk about just about anything else while pursuing it. But there is virtually no action here to balance the chatter. We hear some action and even see some smoke, but are detached from it. Must have been a very small budget.The final scene, in which a farmhouse is assaulted, the men talk up an intricate plan, which oddly results in a clumsy frontal assault of the type they had been professing they would avoid.Perhaps realistic and definitely well-acted, 'Walk' none the less fails to excite.