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STEEL HELMET, THE (director/writer:Samuel Fuller; cinematographer: Ernest Miller; cast: Gene Evans (Sgt. Zack), Robert Hutton (Pvt. "Conchie" Bronte), Richard Loo (Sgt. "Buddhahead" Tanaka), Steve Brodie (Lt. Driscoll), James Edwards (Cpl. "Medic" Thompson), William Chun ("Short Round"), Harold Fong (The Red Major), Sid Melton (Joe, 2nd GI), Richard Monahan (Private Baldy), 1951)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
The screen opens to a steel helmet lying on the ground, after the credits roll by, a staggering, gruff-looking bearded Sergeant Zack (Gene Evans) emerges from under the helmet, hiding from a North Korean sniper, and makes his way to a ravine, where he is seen lying on the ground, tied-up and unconscious. A South Korean orphan, nicknamed by the sergeant "Short Round"(Chun), unties him and wakes him, as they look around and see all the other American PoW's who are lying there dead (a short round is a bullet that doesn't go all the way).
The sergeant is a loner, not interested in company, seemingly busy patching up his wounded leg, sticking the stub of a cigar in his mouth without smoking it (tough army guys always chew cigars without smoking them-it's a time-honored movie cliche). He seems to be interested in just surviving, there is no political savvy about him, as he seems unconcerned about the reasons for the Korean War and what it means. When he mistakenly calls the kid a gook, the indignant kid, who speaks a perfect English, tells him he is South Korean. The kid desperately wants to tag along with the sergeant and after much dissuasion on the sergeant's part, with the kid telling him that it is a Buddhist custom to look after someone whom they rescue: "Your heart is in my hands," he gets his wish. The kid has pinned on his back shirt a paper with a prayer to Buddha.
The wooded area is foggy as they try to get back to the American lines; a black medic corporeal, Thompson (Edwards), appears out of this soup-like condition. He is the lone survivor of a unit ambushed and captured by the reds. As the three move into the dense wooded area, they come across a lost unit of infantrymen, some of them new recruits and a few are veteran enlistees, ones that Zack knows; but the one he hates, is Lt. Driscoll, the 90- day wonder, who is the leader. He resents him because he didn't serve his time in WW11 and was made an officer by an act of congress, and seems to him to be a novice. When the hard-nosed sergeant is asked to take them to a Buddhist temple, he tells them to get there on their own, but when they are soon set-upon, the scraggly group sticks together and fires back at the snipers and the sergeant gives in and makes a bargain, he will take them there, that is, for a box of cigars, to be presented to him when he gets them to their destination point.
The picture is graphic and direct. It could be read as an allegory about the war, except Fuller keeps it to be a no-nonsense telling of the war, one where man is on his own to make of it whatever he wants, not relying on compassion or sentimentality to survive but his own instincts. The most important thing is to come out of it alive. The only thing that is crystal clear, is that there is a lot of confusion about who the men are fighting and what the purpose of the war is, which Fuller never tries to explain.
In the temple a sniper hides out and kills one of them, as Zack nabs the sniper from behind one of the huge Buddhist statues. The contradiction is inevitable, as the war takes place inside this sanctuary of peace, one that honors a man who stood for non-violence above all else. The men are using the strategically located temple as an observation post, as an instrument of war. What they are observing is quite different from what Buddha meant by observation.
There is a friction between Zack and the officer in command. When Zack is wrong about something and is challenged by Driscoll, he fires back, "If I was right all the time, I'd be an officer."
When one of the soldiers plays Auld Lang Syne on the hand organ, the kid sings the South Korean national anthem, which has the same tune going for it.
In one of the most pertinent scenes, when the sniper captured in the temple is revealed as a red major (Fong), who tries to bait the black medic into going against the Americans, by telling him about segregation back home, and telling him that he is a fool to fight for a country that when he returns from the war, he will be considered a second-class citizen. The medic tells him, some things just can't be rushed.
The scene is repeated with the Japanese-American soldier ( Loo), who is reminded about the prison camps the Japanese-Americans were put in during WW11. The result gotten from the major, is the same as the one he got from the medic.
When the unit is surrounded by a massive red force, and there are very few American survivors, Zack comes out of it dazed, as an infantry relief unit comes to take the survivors out of there. Zack is as hard-boiled as ever; but, with a new perspective about people and things.
This low-budget film from Lippert Studios is probably the best film they ever made. The cynical sergeant embodies the way Fuller saw the war when he was in it, which does not glorify the soldier as a hero or try to explain the madness of it, it just lets things happen onscreen. This is a beautifully done B&W action film, one of the most powerful war stories ever made. Gene Evans, in his debut movie role, is nothing short of sensational. The film is taut and grim, and is excellently paced, holding one's interest throughout.
REVIEWED ON 1/8/2000 GRADE: A-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
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