Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

I thought it was interesting that Carlson claims in the beginning that he was with Mao Tse Tung on his Long March. Apparently, Carlson takes the skills and lessons that he learned from the Red Army in Guerilla Warfare and trains a couple of hundred bad boy Americans how to kill and throw themselves on barb wire. The first half of the film follows the training and even has time for a bit of a love story with Noah Beery Jr. (best known from "Rockfile Files" perhaps).The second half involves a submarine ride and a raid on an island held by the Japanese. The action is surprisingly intense. Some scenes, like the shooting of Japanese out of trees reach the level of brutal poetic metaphor. These action scenes detail fierce fighting and are surprisingly even handed with both American and Japanese troops biting the dust pretty regularly.Unlike, "Walk in the Sun" where the audience is given the chance to know and care about each soldier, there is only a pretty stereotyped introduction and then they are molded into one tough killing machine. The title "Gung Ho" we learn means "harmonious work" and that is what we get with precision maneuvers and no hesitation in the face of death on the battlefield.One could call this communist propaganda, but without films like this, could fascism East and West have been defeated?

When you watch GUNG HO!, you'll probably soon recognize how crappy the print is. I know it's been in the public domain and the copy recent shown on Turner Classic Movies was very dark and a bit fuzzy--and TCM usually shows the best print available.As for the film, despite having Randolph Scott and some familiar faces (Noah Beery, Jr., Robert Mitchum and others), it's an amazingly straight-forward and simple film. The usual clichés and side stories, while still present, are much fewer in number and far more emphasis is placed on the training and combat. Additionally, I was amazed at how brutal the film was, as the Raiders were taught to fight very dirty and there was an amazing amount of blood for a 40s era film. It was uncompromising and direct throughout the movie.The film itself is about a special unit within the Marines that were akin to the Army Rangers or a Special Forces unit. Apparently they were a real group and the film was made about their first mission in 1942--only a few months before this film was produced! Because it was so direct and simple, I really enjoyed the film. However, for lovers of Randolph Scott, while he's in GUNG HO!, his role is rather simple and quite unlike his later persona in Westerns.By the way, although the film was pretty good, it featured one of the dumber war clichés as one of the soldier pulls a grenade pin with his teeth--a great way to rip out or shatter your teeth.For more information about this raid (some of which is much more incredible than what is in the film), try http://www.usmarineraiders.org/makin.html.

This fact-based war film (detailing the first ground assault on Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor) is neatly divided into two parts – showing, first, the specialized training session of the carefully-chosen platoon (which is quite interesting) and the mission itself (displaying fairly standard heroics but well enough done nonetheless).The film has been criticized for glamorizing what was essentially a band of cutthroats (Leonard Maltin even describes it as "a jaw-dropping experience"). Still, there was no doubt that any war picture made during this time wouldn't ram propagandist slogans down the audience's throat (witness Randolph Scott's final straight-into-camera speech); ironically, even if the latter was the film's nominal star, he's rarely involved in the action proper – being there mainly to co-ordinate things, and repeatedly instigate his men to kill every Jap on the island!).The supporting cast is good, made up of veteran character actors – J. Carroll Naish, Sam Levene – and newcomers – notably Robert Mitchum; however, a fair share of the running-time is unwisely devoted to the romantic triangle involving a girl and two soldiers who happen to be half-brothers (one of them played by Noah Beery Jr.) – all of which has a quite deadening effect on the main narrative! Despite being a relatively early WWII film, the action sequences are surprisingly gutsy – though accentuated on occasion by obvious stock footage.

First off a word about the "jingoism" battles that seem to be raging in regards to this movie. Get over it! Of course it's racist propaganda, it was made in 1943 for crying out loud. And really the only reason you can call it racist is because the Japanese are the bad guys. They aren't really made out to be any worse than the Germans in other films of the era. But, because of the different race, it is called racist. I haven't seen any Japanes films of the same period but I suspect they were equally as harsh in their portrayal of the Americans. I have seen print examples of Japanese propaganda from that time and they were much worse.On to the more relevant part of the review. The acting was not bad and the story was exciting. Direction and cinematography were okay but nothing to get excited about. The script, as you might expect, was a bit long on melodrama and short on accuracy.The lack of accuracy may be the reason that the names of all the characters were changed from the actual Raiders that took part. It seems very strange for a film to have a subtitle mentioning Carlson's Raiders with the main character being called Colonel Thorwald. The only name that was kept was the nickname of Transport. And the real Transport didn't die in the raid. In fact he was one of the film's technical advisors.I kind of wonder why they bothered with technical advisors, because the movie has basically zero percent of the actual raid in it. The most puzzling thing is the omission of the second in command of the 2nd. Raider Battalion. I really have no idea why the movie propaganda machine of the time would miss a chance to trumpet the fact that Franklin D. Roosevelt's son, Major James Roosevelt, was there. Perhaps that ties in with the reason that the characters were fictionalized. Or perhaps there were security concerns.The portrayal of Carson/Thorwald is somewhat accurate but probably sanitized for public consumption. His time in China had basically turned him into a communist. The actual questioning of the candidates to join the battalion included questions about the political significance of the war and the training included a certain amount of political indoctrination.As I said the actual raid isn't really present in this film. The raid actually lasted much longer than a single day. The last men made it off the island about 11PM the second night. And Carlson at one point actually tried to surrender, partially out of concern for the presence of Major Roosevelt. This fell through mostly because there were so few Japanese left alive on the island. The entire American flag plot line was completely made up and had no basis in reality.The raid was considered by some to be a failure, or at least ineffective in causing the Japanese to be distracted from Guadalcanal and the Solomons. The Solomons were invaded 10 days before the Makin Island raid took place, and the raid was intended as a distraction and intelligence gathering operation. Carlson himself was thought by some to have done a poor job, and he later admitted that he hadn't been at his best.Regardless of the effectiveness of the raid itself and Carlson's performance, the 2nd. Raiders went on to do a much better job on Guadalcanal. But that's another story. Both raider battalions were disbanded not long after Guadalcanal, because it was felt that elite units were not required when all Marines were elite soldiers already.In spite of the falsity of the story it was still an enjoyable film. Especially if you like war movies. Despite the cries of revisionists and appologists, it would seem strange if a film made in 1943 did NOT have a propaganda content. It is a pretty accurate portrayal of the sentiments of the American public of the time. So it's a slice of history in that sense. Tom Sawyer is still a great book, in spite of it's racist content. And Gung Ho is still a decent movie in spite of it's content.