This movie is one of my favorite John Wayne movies for all the wrong reasons. The Duke here is portrayed as a dull witted hothead until he bends to the will of the Navy, which, of course, in 1944, could do no wrong on the silver screen. The caricatures of the Japanese soldiers as grinning psychopaths who lived to take American lives seems ridiculous even when compared to other period movies. The film shows a medium close up of each Japanese sniper and tanker who then proceeds to grin for a full second before taking aim to kill yet another American, often unarmed civilian Americans at that! (Spoiler Warning!) The climactic scene has the Great American Hero so hacked off at the Japanese Army that he hops into a bulldozer and destroys an entire Japanese assault column and it's tanks as if pushing so much rubbish off the road! This one will never go into archives as the greatest war film of all time, but, is amusing in it's way as propaganda that approaches ridiculous in its depictions.
Review of The Fighting Seabees
