Merrill's Marauders

Merrill's Marauders Review

Brigadier General Frank Merrill (Jeff Chandler) commands the 5307th Composite Unit, a light infantry Special Operations group of the U.S. Army, operating in southeast Asia (mostly Burma) during World War II. The task for him and his 3,000 very much battle-hardened men is to help keep the Japanese Army from crossing through the country from the west and heading on towards India. His men are seriously fatigued and in need of rest; most have volunteered for extra combat tours and are due to be relieved, but Merrill keeps having new assignments given to him by his superior, General Stilwell (John Hoyt), and his fatherly relationship with a young lieutenant, Stock (Ty Hardin) is regularly tested as he demands more and more; and this tests Stock's relationships with his men, particularly his platoon sergeant (Claude Akins) who thinks that Stock and Merrill have gotten too close.

This is essentially a survival-type war film, with many small skirmishes shown, which along with the vagaries of long jungle treks and hazardous mountain climbs take a huge toll on the men, who are even at the beginning of the film already at their limits. It follows the pretty standard war film clichés, with several of Stock's men introduced and given little character bits - one is a Filipino patriot who hates the Japanese (but is the only speaker of the language in the platoon), one an expert marksman nicknamed `Bullseye", one a man whose never-full stomach leads him into trouble, and so on. There's little here that's fresh or unpredictable in any way, but director Sam Fuller and his ace cinematographer William Clothier shoot it beautifully and economically; look for the several sunset shots in particular, which are just gorgeous. Though this might well be Fuller's most "conventional" war film (I've seen all of them now except for HELL AND HIGH WATER), some of his characteristic interests do manage to creep in, such as the questioning of authority - as each man resents what the next guy higher up tells him to do, but has to do it anyway - and the empathy for, and focus on the common G.I.

More interesting in some ways than the film itself are a couple of back stories. First, this was Chandler's last film - he died just after finishing shooting it, of a botched operation on his back, for an injury suffered while playing basketball with some of the extras on the film, a sad and untimely end for the 42-year old imposing, deep-voiced actor who was himself a veteran of the war. Chandler had been nominated for an Oscar in an early role in BROKEN ARROW (1950), but to my mind this is probably his best work, as he plays Merrill with a huge amount of soul and compassion, and he's very convincing in showing the pain of the general's real-life heart condition; he may have been having back problems already while shooting the film. I suspect that he was already dead - or hospitalized - while the editing was still going on; there are some looped bits of his dialogue that are clearly not spoken by him. The other interesting tidbit is that costar Hardin eventually left acting to become a rather well-known white supremacist and organizer of a paramilitary militia group; ironically enough, star Chandler and director-writer Fuller were both Jewish - and Fuller's last American film, released right around the time Hardin's activities as a right-wing political activist were gearing up, was the explicitly anti-racist WHITE DOG (1982).

Not a great film all in all, but a good and solid one, certainly worth seeing for all the fans out there of Samuel Fuller, one of America's greatest (and still underappreciated) directors, and a nice tribute to one of those might-have-been-greats, Jeff Chandler.

Merrill's Marauders Overview

Brigadier General Frank D. Merrill leads the 3,000 American volunteers of his 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), aka "Merrill's Marauders", behind Japanese lines across Burma to Myitkyina, pushing beyond their limits and fighting pitched battles at every strong-point.

Merrill's Marauders Specifications

The theatrical trailer included in this DVD release of Merrill’s Marauders, touting its depiction of "World War II’s most fabulous jungle fighters… (as) they showed the world what the American soldier can do," makes director Samuel Fuller’s 1962 film sound like jingoistic propaganda, but it’s considerably more than that. The year is 1944; the U.S. Army’s 5307th Composite Unit, a 3000-strong outfit under the command of Brigadier General Frank Merrill (Jeff Chandler), has already been fighting the occupying Japanese forces in the wilds of Burma for several months when they’re assigned to march hundreds of miles through jungles, swamps, and mountains to Myitkyina, a town of considerable strategic importance and the gateway to India, where the Allies fear the Japanese and Nazis will meet and consolidate their forces. Mission impossible? So it would seem, as the men are exhausted, disease-ridden, disheartened, and ill-equipped; his second in command, Lt. Stockton (Ty Hardin), argues that they'll never make it, but Merrill (who has a heart condition that could bring him down at any moment) refuses to let up. There are numerous combat sequences, most of them quite convincing (including a very cool scene in a concrete maze), but the film’s strength lies not only in its graphic chronicling of the obvious horrors of war but in its sympathetic (but never condescending) portrayal of the more quotidian aspects of these soldiers' miserable lives, from easy banter to quarrels over food and ammunition, from the interactions with locals to the sheer hell of simply walking another step when you’ve already passed the limits of human endurance. Grim, gritty, intense, and realistic (Fuller was an Army vet himself), this is an effective precursor to the director’s best-known movie, The Big Red One. --Sam Graham

Available at Amazon Check Price Now!

*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Nov 04, 2010 05:37:07