Leofwine_draca EIGHT IRON MEN has one of those screenplays that started life as a stage play, so the action is centred in a single location. It's the tale of a group of WW2-era soldiers who are pinned down in a single location and must figure out a way to rescue their wounded colleague on the outset. I feel that such plays are hit or miss affairs and sadly this is one of the more dated examples of its type. The action is sparse and the dialogue comes thick and heavy, but the actors struggle with their uninteresting roles and lead Bonar Colleano is particularly irritating. You do get Lee Marvin delivering a typically bullish turn but his presence isn't enough to save the movie as a whole.

max von meyerling An example of that now nearly extinct oxymoron- the quiet war movie. These were inevitably adaptations of plays. The theatre, in the olden days before television, 24/7 news cycles etc., once prided itself on being able to respond to current events and the significance of contemporary history. The WPA Theatre Project produced the Living Newspaper during the New Deal. After every war there were plays dealing with that war but unrecognizable from war movies because of the confined spaces of a theatre. The post WW1 period was particularly rich in war plays. This was the height of theatre and I guess the masterpiece of this genre was R. C. Sheriff's Journey's End.American Lawrence Stallings (What Price Glory?) and others also wrote plays in the genre. Playwrights responded to ww2 in much the same way. Again the restrictions usually dictated a one set play, with maybe some change of scene in act two and perhaps a small adjunct set to play out some subsidiary action. These were later translated into films. EIGHT IRON MEN was adapted from a play and reduces the agonies of fighting a war to something like real time and a single human life. The classical unities of time and space are nearly totally observed. Remarkable for a war film. A eight man squad led by Lee Marvin Sgt. Mooney) is quartered in the basement of a ruined house. A three man patrol comes back minus one man who is trapped in a bomb crater being swept by a fearsomely placed machine gun.The squad is due to be pulled back after 17 days on the line but are under orders not to go and rescue the pinned man. Captain Trelawny (Barney Phillips), aware of the heavy casualties of his unit, doesn't want three men killed trying to save one ("I came up here with a company and I'll be lucky to leave with a platoon"). The tension builds as it becomes closer to the time to move out and leave one of their buddies behind. That's it. Basically one set with brief forays into another set depicting a rubble strewn street being periodically swept by machine gun fire. There was some attempt at opening out by literally visualizing the sub-erotic sex fantasies of the men particularly Bonar Colleano (Collucci) ("Tonight I'll be whistling at every dame in the country. You can't keep a healthy guy like me stuck away like this for too long - I go crazy - I get hair on the palms of my hands - the beast rises in me.") but almost all of the tension is provided in the dialogue between the men.' The conclusions reached reflect the hard bitten cynicism of men at war, of being used by fate, and of the connecting sinews which build between men at their extreme.EIGHT IRON MEN is no masterpiece but it is very effective drama, just don't expect any of the usual visceral thrills which accompany most action oriented war films. There are no villains. The German's are never seen. The Captain is neither a sniveling coward nor a vain martinet who gets his men killed for his greater glory. Though he is aware his 'efficiency' is being scrutinized by higher ups, he shows some repressed satisfaction at the recovery of the missing man. This is not the kind of film where the more knowledgeable in the audience can guffaw "Aw, real people don't act that way."This is merely a crumb in the vast shitcake of the continuing cruelty of a mankind which seems eternally waging war with itself. Its unfortunate that not only is there no more theatre like this but there are no more films like this, nor even TV like this (not since the 50s actually). It has all been replaced by 24/7 news and a whole host of too highly paid self advertising jackanapes entertainers under the guise of political pundits.

sol ***SPOILERS*** Based on the little know 1945 Broadway play "A Sound of Hunting". The film "Eight Iron Men" has to do with a US infantry squad pinned down by German machine gun fire in an Italian town during the battle of Mount Cassino. One of the squad members Pvt.Smalls, George Cooper, end up stuck in a bomb crater with his fellow GI's tying to get him back, not knowing if he's either dead or alive, to safety and risking the entire infantry company by doing it.Realistic and gritty war drama with Lee Marvin in his first staring role as Sgt. Mooney as he together with the rest of his squad are willing to risk their lives to save the life of a fellow GI. Pvt. Smalls turns out to have been fast asleep, with a twisted ankle and a shot of morphine, in a shell crater and totally unaware of all the commotion that he caused. Defying orders from their commanding Officer Capt. Treiawny, Barney Phillips, Sgt. Mooney's squad refuses to withdraw giving the Captain fits with him on the verge of having court-martial Mooney and the rest of his men if he didn't comply. It turns out that squad members would rather spend the rest of their live in the brig knowing that they did their best to rescue one of theirs, a member of the "Eight Iron Men", then live the rest of their lives as free men not knowing that their inaction was the cause his death.There's a somewhat comedy bit thrown into the story about a fruitcake that's to be split up between the GI's and the last piece, after the other even were given out to the men in the squad, is left for Pvt. Smalls. That causes a lot of tension with the men not knowing if Smalls is even alive to eat it and at the same time wanting to eat the goodie themselves. We also have the usual goof-off of the outfit Pvt. Collucci, Bonar Colleano, who likens himself to be a modern day Casanova with the ladies. Since there's no women in the deserted burnt and blasted town we have a number of dream sequences put into the film where lover-boy Collucci has all the beautiful dames that he can or even, and that may be asking a bit too much of Collucci,can't handle. Collucci is such a great lover, in his own mind, that he's even able to steal away the girl that fellow GI Pvt. Ferguson,James Griffith,had just married in his dream! Thats something which I doubt that even the great Cassanove would be able to do on his best day or night.Sgt. Mooney and a number of his men going out to fetch the missing Pvt. Smalls are pinned by German machine gun fire and forced to retreat back to their defensive position. Just when he and his men are about to give up on ever finding Smalls Pvt. Collucci the great lover turns into the great warrior as he single handed takes out the German machine gun nest and a German sniper. Grabbing an unconscious, due to his injecting himself with morphine, Pvt. Smalls Collucci brings him back to the squad headquarters. Just when, a totally shocked and happily surprised, Sgt. Mooney and his men were about to leave without him or the already left for dead Pvt. Smalls.Pvt. Collucci became the unlikely hero of the entire squad. In the end he got something far more real and satisfying then all the imagery gorgeous babes that he dreamed about all throughout the film. A real honest to goodness second piece of that delicious fruitcake. The piece that was reserved for the missing Pvt. Smalls.

batjacole1 Based on a 1945 play by Harry Brown, this dreary movie moves between standard banter between men in a somewhat stressful situation (the bombed out rubble of a house in Italy) who are ordered out but are reluctant to leave a pinned down member of the platoon, and dream sequences that are painful, and populated by Rita Hayworth look-a-likes. While an excellent example of the continuing development of the persona of Lee Marvin, and containing one of last performances of Bonar Colleano, who would be killed in an auto accident a few years later, it is really a vehicle for several Hollywood character actors whose faces but not names come readily to mind (Arthur Franz, Richard Kiley (pre LaMancha), Barney Phillips and James Griffith). Not available on DVD or VHS, it surfaces occasionally on TV in connection with Lee Marvin retrospectives. That is the only reason to see this film.