This Allen Dwan directed classic stars John Wayne as Marine Sgt. John Stryker.
Stryker has a lot of personal demons and is one of the most hated and feared men in the Marines. He gets a new batch of recruits and he has to whip them into shape for their upcoming battles.
Wayne commands every scene he's in and is very believable in the role as a cold hearted Sgt. Wayne is helped in this film by excellent direction and a cast that includes John Agar, Forrest Tucker, Martin Milner, Richard Webb, Arthur Franz, Richard Jaeckel and Adele Mara.
There is plenty of real stock footage of the raid at Tarawa Beach and on Iwo Jima. It blends in perfectly with the studio shot footage and everything in this film just falls together.
Coming from a Military family, I watched this with my parents many times, but the first time I saw it I was about 7 and the ending really hit me hard. I mean come on...John Wayne was the hero and it was the second time I had seen the hero die on screen.
I also love this film because of the supporting cast. It's made up of a lot of actors I later saw in some of my favorite monster movies and TV shows.
I really cannot recommend this enough. This film is a tribute to the thousands of men and women who died for this country and the freedoms we had for so many years. A lot of those freedoms are gone today.
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