This outfit they could give back to General Custer!

Rating: 8/10 (9 May 2011)

***SPOILERS*** Very sanitized Hollywood version of the James Jones hard hitting novel about army life pre Pearl Harbor and the people, man and women, involved with it.
Transferring into a tough infantry outfit former US Army bugler Robert E. Lee Prewitt, Montgomery Cliff, or "Prew" as he's called is really in for it, the business, in his refusing to take part in the regimental boxing championship that's slated for December 15, 1941. Prew has become very mild mannered, instead of violent, after blinding his army buddy Dixie Wells in a sparring match and has given up using his fists in and out of the boxing ring! This has his company commander Capt. Dana Holmes, Philip Ober, have his men use a little persuasion to get Prew back in the ring by making his life miserable while he's there!
While this is going on Prew's top sergeant Sgt. Milt Warden, Burt Lancaster, has been keeping an eye on Capt. Holmes' old lady, or wife, the sexy Karen Holmes, Deborah Kerr, who with her being on the outs with him, after she caught Captain Holmes with another woman, is looking for action and tries to find it with the many men stationed at the the Schofield Barracks US Army military base.
Prew gets to find love at the local whorehouse in town, appropriately called the New Congress Club, with Lorene Burke, Donna Reed, whom he mistakes for a normal All-American working girl from the state of Oregon instead of a hooker! You would think that Prew was smart enough, in being an army man for five years, to be able to see the difference! Thrown into the mix is the outfit's #1 screw up Pvt. Angelo Maggio,that's Maggio without the "D" in front, who knew Prew back at Fort Shafter where he was the company bugler.
As the US moves towards war in the Pacific things get really spicy as well as dangerous for all the major characters in the film. Sgt.Warden and Karen have a hot and heavy love affair and Maggio in getting drunk and AWOL on guard duty ends up in the brig that's run by the sadistic Sgt. Fatso Judsdon, Ernest Borgnine, who's got it in for him big time! Prew meanwhile lose his ability to turn the other cheek when Captain Holmes has his boys push the poor guy to the brink and ends up wiping the floor with his #1 goon Sgt. Galovitch, John Dennis, who asked for and really got it from the former confirmed US Army pacifist. After getting his clock cleaned by the hard hitting Prew Sgt. Galovitch was busted down to private and put in charge, a fitting Job for the butt-kissing sergeant, of the company latrine. As for Galovitch's boss Captain Holmes he got canned out of the US Army for conduct unbecoming an officer or even enlisted man!
***SPOILERS*** What really saves the movie is the Japanese sneak attack on Peral Harbor since up until then, with the exception of the Sgt. Warden & Karen Holmes sizzling surf side love scene, it was really going nowhere and nowhere fast. We had a few knife fights and a person beaten to death, off camera, as well as Prew getting his act together but by then, with the US at war, it didn't help him that much by him refusing an order for him to advance and be recognized! As for the women in the film Karen & Lorene they checked out of Hawaii never to return again in all the hurt and suffering they went through in them both being there.
P.S Check out George "Superman" Reeves as US Army Sgt. Maylon Stark as one of Karens lovers back in the states, Fort Bliss Texas, who fills in a very much in love with her as well as very naive Sgt.Warden in just what he's in for by fooling around with the man hungry and sex starved Karen Holmes!