Gritty adaptation of sprawling best-seller...but it loses something as a film...

Rating: 7/10 (25 August 2006)

I would have to say, after reading James Jones' sprawling novel about the peacetime Army in the days before Pearl Harbor, that this is about as good an abridgment of his work as could have been made at the time.
All of the most brutal prison stockade scenes have been removed (along with the coarse language), personalities have been softened to suit the censorship of the time (Donna Reed is a "hostess" instead of a whore), Warden's latent homosexuality is never mentioned, and yet--with all the deletions--Daniel Taradish has fashioned a very strong film script.
As characters rebelling against authority, MONTGOMERY CLIFT and FRANK SINATRA do admirable jobs. Clift is especially touching in his combination of toughness and the ability to show his tender side; Sinatra is well cast as Maggio and makes the most of a strong supporting role.
As Karen, DEBORAH KERR has been reduced to a supporting character, but she effectively portrays a lonely woman who cannot stay immune to the charms of equally lonely soldiers. Her famous love scene with Lancaster on the beach is the stuff movie magic is made of. It's the sort of role one might expect Joan Crawford to turn up in, so it's surprising to find Kerr in the role, a woman whose ladylike image made it a risky casting choice at the time.
The most effective part of the film is Clift's fatal encounter with "Fatso" (ERNEST BORGNINE). Their bitter exchanges lead to a nifty fight scene. Borgnine is such a believable bully that it's a wonder he was able to stretch beyond bully roles after this film. The antagonism between him and "Prew" (CLIFT), as well as the big action set piece of the attack on Pearl Harbor, are just a couple of reasons why the film captures so much of the flavor of the best-selling novel. The love stories (both of them) are interwoven into the structure of the story with telling effect.
But all in all, I've always felt that this film was overpraised from the very beginning by the critics. Perhaps because I read the hard-hitting James Jones novel first and was awestruck at what an accomplishment it was.
The film only manages to be a pale carbon copy of the original work--but, as I said, it's still absorbing entertainment even with some of the characters diluted to meet censorship requirements.