NOTE: This is not a new review. I wrote it in 2011 or thereabouts on seeing it for the second time.
While not the worst WW2 movie ever made (it’s better, at least, than Pearl Harbor), this has to be one of the dullest.
Exactly what the point of In Harm’s Way is supposed to be isn’t very clear; it’s primarily the story of the manly-named Rockwell Torrey (John Wayne), who, initially reprimanded for his actions immediately after Pearl Harbor, is given the command of a Pacific-theater operation to secure a group of islands for use as a mid-ocean airstrip; to do this, he surrounds himself with old friends, including his troubled friend Eddington (Kirk Douglas) and his roommate Powell (Burgess Meredith). Maggie Haynes (Patricia Neal), a nurse with whom Torrey has a budding relationship, is also along for the ride, as is Jere, Torrey’s estranged son (Brandon DeWilde), as well as host of other characters, many of whom have their own stories.
Everything climaxes with a tedious sea battle, which features some astoundingly bad effects work; one especially laughable bit has a PT boat struck by a larger vessel using a painfully clumsy mixture of rear projection and a fake-looking explosion. The effects throughout are second-rate, and they actively take one out of the story—that is, when sheer boredom doesn’t do the trick.
Wendell Mayes’ script has far too many scenes that accomplish nothing but the wasting of time, and some painfully corny lines made it in; Burgess Meredith is saddled with the two worst of them: “Man, I tell you, the women—they’re smokin’ cigarettes, drinkin’ whiskey, doin’ the shimmy-sham-shimmy, hot damn, man!” and “I’m so scared, my bones are clicking—like dice on a Reno craps table.” To be fair, most of it isn’t so painful, but cliches pervade the film throughout, with tropes like the estranged son, the unfaithful wife, the lonely Navy wife, the political sleazeball, etc., etc., ad nauseum.
The actors generally do what they can, given the circumstances, but a number of them seem defeated by the script’s limitations. John Wayne was seriously ill during filming (not long afterward, he had a lung removed), and his performance lacks the fire he was capable of, but he doesn’t disgrace himself. Kirk Douglas tries hard, but his character is poorly drawn (late in the film he commits a crime which is about as implausible as the victim’s reaction to it), and, like Wayne, his reputation is what saves him. Patricia Neal and Jill Haworth are passable as the leading ladies, and Burgess Meredith, his painful dialogue aside, isn’t bad; Patrick O’Neal, however, is stuck with the sleazeball role, and can’t rise to the villainous heights that he achieved in The Cardinal.
Stanley Holloway is stuck with a cutesy role as an Australian who acts as a guide to the soldiers, while Brandon DeWilde seems bored by his role, and not without justification. Barbara Bouchet, as Douglas’s drunken, unfaithful wife, is only in the film for about 10 minutes, but her half-baked, obnoxious performance (along with her very 60s appearance), leave a decided impression. Rounding out the cast, Tom Tryon, like O’Neal, fails to live up to the standard of his role in The Cardinal, and Paula Prentiss, as his wife, is stuck with a cliched role and corny dialogue (“I’ll cry in my soup” and “Leave me with a baby this time, Mac”).
Otto Preminger, who directed this mess, cannot bring much excitement to the table, and reduces the various storylines to, essentially, a military soap opera. A few scenes scattered throughout have the right touch, but for the most part, Preminger seems to have lost interest in the film as he made it.
The film’s major saving grace is Loyal Grigg’s cinematography. In Harm’s Way was filmed in black and white at a time when big-budget films were mostly being made in color, and why this all-star, presumably expensive war epic wasn’t made so as well is unknown, but Griggs makes the most of it, and some lovely shots are pulled off, particularly during the Pearl Harbor attack sequence: for example, a car, fleeing from strafing Zeros, zooms past the camera, which immediately begins to follow it down the road; a simple effect, perhaps, but one of the little touches that make the film more attractive than it really deserves to be.
NOTE: The cinematography was actually nominated for an Oscar (it lost to Ship of Fools), while Patricia Neal won the BAFTA for Best Foreign Actress.
That it is, for the most part, dully competent, disqualifies it from being one of the great unintentional comedies. But it’s one of those films that make you pity the Armed Forces, who deserve better tributes than this warmed-over tedium.
Score: When I wrote this review, I gave it a score of 45, but in retrospect that’s a touch harsh; it’s a bad, boring film, but not quite that bad. I’ll bump it up to a 48.
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