After routing the Japanese Army in films like "The Fighting Seabees" and "The Sands of Iwo Jima", John Wayne now returns to the fray to take on their Navy. He plays the "executive officer", or second-in-command, of the submarine USS Thunderfish who later takes over as captain after his commanding officer is killed in action. His character is named Lt-Cdr Duke E. Gifford; was this name, I wonder, deliberately coined to reflect the fact that Wayne's nickname was "Duke"? The main action, as one might expect, tells the story of how Duke and his crew send large parts of the Imperial Navy to the bottom of the Pacific, but there are also two sublots. One of these deals with an investigation to find out why torpedoes are not exploding after hitting enemy ships. The other, and more important, subplot concerns Duke's attempts to win back his ex-wife Mary, even though she is now romantically involved with Bob, a handsome young Navy pilot who just happens to be the younger brother of Duke's commanding officer. (Of course, he succeeds in his romantic quest; Bob's youth and good looks count for nothing against the normal Hollywood rule that in any film involving a love-triangle the bigger name star will always end up with the girl).
The film was made six years after the end of the war, and there is a contrast with something like "The Fighting Seabees", which was made while the war was still going on. By 1951 Japan had become one of America's Cold War allies, so the film, while still patriotic in tone, is largely free of the anti-Japanese racism which disfigured "Seabees" and a number of other wartime dramas about the Pacific theatre. No Japanese characters appear at all; they are now merely a faceless enemy rather than figures of hatred.
Wayne is not an actor one would normally associate with films about love and romance, but the Duke/Mary subplot plays a surprisingly large part in the film. In this case, however, the characterisation works better than one might expect. We learn that Duke's marriage broke down because was a strong, silent man of action whose first love was the Navy and who found it difficult to express his emotions, even after the death of his and Mary's infant son. And who was better than Wayne at playing strong, silent, unemotional men of action? Except that here he not only does his normal action man thing but also portrays a man forced for the first time to look inside himself for feelings he did not know he possessed and who learns how to say "I love you" and mean it. The result is not only an unusually nuanced and complex Wayne performance but also a war drama which is something more than a standard flag-waving actioner. 7/10
The film was made six years after the end of the war, and there is a contrast with something like "The Fighting Seabees", which was made while the war was still going on. By 1951 Japan had become one of America's Cold War allies, so the film, while still patriotic in tone, is largely free of the anti-Japanese racism which disfigured "Seabees" and a number of other wartime dramas about the Pacific theatre. No Japanese characters appear at all; they are now merely a faceless enemy rather than figures of hatred.
Wayne is not an actor one would normally associate with films about love and romance, but the Duke/Mary subplot plays a surprisingly large part in the film. In this case, however, the characterisation works better than one might expect. We learn that Duke's marriage broke down because was a strong, silent man of action whose first love was the Navy and who found it difficult to express his emotions, even after the death of his and Mary's infant son. And who was better than Wayne at playing strong, silent, unemotional men of action? Except that here he not only does his normal action man thing but also portrays a man forced for the first time to look inside himself for feelings he did not know he possessed and who learns how to say "I love you" and mean it. The result is not only an unusually nuanced and complex Wayne performance but also a war drama which is something more than a standard flag-waving actioner. 7/10