edwagreen
Did this film come out in 1963? I would guess the year is wrong. Bill Bendix looked just like he did in his films of the late 1940s and 1950s. True that Rory Calhoun looked somewhat older, but something is terribly amiss here, and I'm not even talking about the film just yet.Whoever thought that a war film with such a cast could be that dull? It dealt with 3 American soldiers fleeing from a North Korean prisoner camp. They meet up with a little boy who joins forces with them after his parents are killed.Bendix plays his usual role as a tough guy with a heart of gold. Richard Jaeckel's role as a collaborator just didn't make much sense, but neither did this movie. It's 84 minutes of tedious boredom.O Rory, allowing a kid age 7 to puff away on cigarette was nauseating. Your line that it wouldn't hurt him must have had the American Cancer Society up in arms. No wonder you succumbed to kidney failure, emphysema and diabetes years later. Bendix is also smoking away in this 1963 film, but by 1964 he was dead of stomach cancer. Suspicious of the year of this miserable film.
Matthew Stechel
Movie isn't anything fantastic but it does contain many many scenes of Rory Calhoun standing and walking as if his life depends on it--and given that he's being chased by North Koreans who are ready and eager to kill him at the drop of a hat--it certainly does.I can't really fault anything that happens in the film--its literally something that came on TCM when i wasn't really paying attention, looked up the synopsis of the film and who was in it and ended up watching it mainly because it looked like it was Rory Calhoun Standing and Walking The Motion Picture--which it kind of was.Would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to see Rory Calhoun in all his standing and walking glory. (but to be honest with you i'm positive he's stood and walked in better films then this before..he must have right?)
bkoganbing
A.C. Lyles who is primarily known as a producer of B westerns utilizing players past their prime years decided to go in for B Korean War film which combines escaping GI POWS with a good old fashioned boy and his dog story in The Young And The Brave. The results are less than gratifying.The trio of escaping GIs are Rory Calhoun, William Bendix and Robert Ivers. Bendix is really looking way too old to be a convincing combat soldier and in fact he was in his middle Fifties. A friendly Korean farmer and wife help them out which causes their deaths, but their son played by Manuel Padilla and his adopted German Shepherd dog escape with the soldiers. The kid and the dog prove most useful like Rusty and Rin Tin Tin.The location for the film looks a whole lot like many a western was shot there and I suspect A.C. Lyles went to familiar turf to shoot this film. All the players look like they've really got no conviction in this project. Maybe A.C. should have stuck to westerns.
tomreynolds2004
20 years after Guadalcanal Diary, Bendix and Jaeckel are reunited for one of the most tired and cliched war movie scripts I've ever been unfortunate enough to have to sit through, The pacing is glacial. The cliches are ridiculous and the three main footsoldiers range between about 42 and 55 years in age -- in Korea! Why even make a Korean War movie in 1963 if you have nothing new to say? If this film had anything to say, it would be hard to find it amidst all the cliches. Manuel Padilla Jr. does a decent enough job keeping Han from being too syrupy. And, Bendix, Calhoun, and Jaeckel are all certainly earnest enough. The production values are shoddy, and Jaeckel looks embarrasses in every scene in which he appears.
I nominate this hideous fiasco for the IMDB bottom 100.
AD
