January 8, 2023

This starts out with a degree of promise. A group of war-weary soldiers are facing overwhelming odds as they try to defend a remote island airstrip from the invading Japanese. "Mace" (Arthur Franz) commands this group of brave men but sadly, for the plot, he soon becomes romantically embroiled with a visiting forces entertainer "Jean" (Kristine Miller) and at this point the score turns all violin-led and the plot deteriorates into a rather soppy … read the rest.

This starts out with a degree of promise. A group of war-weary soldiers are facing overwhelming odds as they try to defend a remote island airstrip from the invading Japanese. "Mace" (Arthur Franz) commands this group of brave men but sadly, for the plot, he soon becomes romantically embroiled with a visiting forces entertainer "Jean" (Kristine Miller) and at this point the score turns all violin-led and the plot deteriorates into a rather soppy melodrama that rather negates the courageous story that we started with. It was obviously made for domestic consumption to bolster post-war audiences, but somehow the lightweight cast and rather wordy dialogue drown out what action scenes there actually are, leaving us with some interesting audio descriptions of the dogfighting overhead - and they sound authentic enough - but with little else. It's decently enough produced, but is little better than a standard afternoon B-feature that passes the time all too slowly.

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