A few questions

Rating: 8/10 (10 December 2016)

Whereas the film is fun to watch on its own merits, it begs going back and reading the book if it can be got hold of nowadays. (December 2016 is when I type this review.) I have a number of questions, not the least of which is, where are the other officers in captain Holmes' company? A company was (and still is) composed of a number of platoons (three in those days; I thin that still holds true today) each led by a second lieutenant. Whether or not a fourth, 'heavy weapons' platoon (with mortars and machine guns) was also included, I don't know. I have it on good information that by July 1943 an infantry rifle company n the U.S. Army had six officers and one hundred and eighty-seven enlisted men; I'm not sure about the order-of-battle strength as of the 1941 Table of Organization. I also know that the 1943 company did in fact have a heavy weapons platoon, but that's really neither here nor there; the point is, there should have been a number of lieutenants in the company, one or more of which might not have approved of what the non-coms were doing in order to get Prewitt to box. That might have generated more conflict between Holmes, these officers, and the non-coms in question. It would become a conflict of the captain and the non-coms against Prewitt and the Lieutenants, with Warden caught in the middle. How's that sound? Other than that, the movies is always a good watch, but like I said above, it makes yo want to go back and read the book. The same holds true for the Harry Potter films and any other film based on a book. That way, you're never in the dark about what characters might be thinking. You also get to see what was left out of the film and, in this case, what all the fuss was about.
Every character has his 'character merits', but Warden, the consummate professional staff enlisted man, is my favorite. It's guys like that who make the army run smoothly from day to day. I also like the way he takes charge as the Japanese air strike unfolds. Prewitt was right; he would have made a good officer.