Between Heaven and Hell
A callow Southern aristocrat (the charismatically challenged Robert Wagner) acquires character and democratic values in the crucible of combat, via a laboriously complicated script that begins in the middle of things and then loads on explanatory flashbacks like a forklift. On "an island in the Pacific, 1945," the scion of a Tennessee cotton dynasty becomes not only comrade-in-arms but also friend to the sharecroppers he once scorned. Although the jungle island is crawling with Japanese snipers and patrols, the greatest danger comes from U.S. officers who are variously incompetent, "yellow," or--in the case of company commander Broderick Crawford--certifiably insane. Screenwriter Harry Brown wrote the World War II classicA Walk in the Sun11 years earlier, but the characters here are a dull lot and the dialogue terminally flatfooted. However, director Richard Fleischer blocks his action scenes to take full advantage of the CinemaScope format.--Richard T. Jameson