War, it is often said, brings out the best and the worst in man... Stanley Kubrick clearly considered 'Path of Glory' as an effective comment on men exposed to repulsive circumstances…

The threatening morning of December 7, 1941—a quiet Sunday—is shattered by waves of Japanese planes bombing U.S Navy's base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, sending all its battleships to the bottom of the ocean... The scene is taken in brief, with few shots of airplanes and some explosions in the ocean...

Among the few ships that escape, in one piece, is the destroyer Cassidy protected by Lieutenant William McConnel(Tom Tryon).

Out on patrol, in high seas, a cruiser, commanded by Captain Torrey Rockwell (John Wayne),is having gunnery practice... It is this ship that serves as temporary operational headquarters for the survivors of the aerial attack...

In the aftermath of the surprise military strike, Torrey receives orders to amass his small fleet of warships and engage the enemy…

Photographed in black and white, the film has several characters, most of them very mature and realistic...

Paul Eddington (Kirk Douglas),a commander whose drunken wife (Barbara Bouchet) has committed adultery with a pilot (Hugh O'Brien). He relieves his anger by brutally raping a young nurse (Jill Haworth),and later, to save from being a total failure, defies orders by flying a reconnaissance plane and takes off alone to situate the hidden Japanese fleet in a very hazardous mission...

Egan Powell (Burgess Meredith),a sardonic wartime officer and a peacetime script writer who gives moments of sane observation, specially in a scene with Wayne discussing danger...

Patricia Neal, a mature and understanding Navy nurse who loves Captain Torrey and informs him that his son from whom he hasn't seen since for many years, is a naval officer on the island...

Brandon De Wilde is Jere, the young opportunist hoping to keep out of the way his PT boat assignment by leading a soft staff job… Henry Fonda is the admiral in command of the Pacific theater; Dana Andrews is the weak Admiral Broderick and Patrick O'Neal is a well-connected congressman-turned-officer Cmdr. Neal Owynn...

Although an excellent film, Otto Preminger's "In Harm's Way" (1965) has never been one of my personal favorites; probably because the most interesting character, Commander Eddington (Kirk Douglas),inexplicably turns into sex maniac and must redeem himself with an extremely silly kamikaze gesture. Since you have a lot invested in the character, the sudden manifestation of mega self-destructive tendencies (both figurative and literal) cause the film to self-destruct along with his character.

The only positive about Eddington's downward spiral is that it allowed Preminger to give additional screen time to his ingénue Jill Haworth. Her Ensign Annalee Dorne character ranks near the top of cinema's all-time cuteness scale, a pleasant memory whenever one thinks about the film.

"In Harms's Way" feels more like a film made just after the war than 20 years later. It begins extremely well with probably the best "attack on Pearl Harbor" sequences ever-in part because they are not the main thrust of the story and are not all that elaborate. Captain Rockwell Torrey's (John Wayne) is at sea when the attack begins and for him the biggest battle is political. With the help of politically savvy Commander Egan Powell (Burgess Meredith),and the moral support of a nurse from his generation Lieutenant Maggie Hayes (Patricia Neal),he weathers the accountability storm and eventually assumes a key command under Admiral Nimitz (Henry Fonda).

As noted above, Torrey's aide (Eddington) is never able to adjust to the death of his less than faithful wife (Barbara Bouchet). His main competition for Haworth's character is Captain Torrey's estranged son, nicely played by Brandon De Wilde although the physical differences between the two actors make it very hard to accept the parentage premise. Interestingly, their relationship and physical mismatch is virtually identical to Wayne's earlier one with actor Claude Jarman in John Ford's "Rio Grande" (1950). Both De Wilde ("Shane") and Jarman ("The Yearling") were famous child stars trying to transition to adult roles. De Wilde was killed several years after his "In Harm's Way" appearance.

The villain of the story (at least until Douglas becomes totally unglued) is Commander Neal Owen (Patrick O'Neal),a publicity seeking former congressman who has enlisted to serve as PR officer to incompetent Admiral 'Blackjack' Broderick (Dana Andrews).

Somehow Torrey eventually finds time to actually fight the Japanese.

Because "In Harm's Way" is often melodramatic soap opera rather than action adventure, Wayne gets a chance to really act and makes the most of it. It is arguably his all-time best performance, aided by Preminger's excellent acting for the camera direction and a very strong supporting cast that really challenged Duke to let it all go. His scenes with Neal are his all-time best.

Preminger and his editor get high praise for the film's pacing, inserting quality subplots (like the Tom Tryon and Paula Prentiss romance) to keep things moving along nicely. Not so praiseworthy are the special effects, which may in part account for the 1940's feel of the film. There is poor use of optical-printer effects and the ship models sit so high in the water that they betray all efforts to make them behave realistically.

There's an incredible panoply of recognizable stars including Slim Pickens, George Kennedy, Hugh O'Brien, Carroll O'Connor, Larry Hagman, and Stanley Holloway.

Paramount's DVD is not just widescreen glory (an excellent 16x9 B&W transfer) but has a considerable number of nice special features. A featurette with outtakes and three trailers.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

James Bassett's novel was pretty retrograde for the mid 1960s. It endorsed every apple-pie value imaginable. Adulterers and rapists die. The Navy was good, but politicians, high-class Bostonian elites, public relations personnel, journalists, and rear echelon headline mongerers were condemned. On top of that the book was clumsily written. Everyone -- men and women alike -- seemed to speak with the same cadence and vocabulary. Cliché followed cliché. When -- Full speed ahead; damn the spoilers! -- when Rockwell Torrey loses a leg at the end of the story, he's ashamed to face his girl friend because he's "only half a man." I'm not making that up. And when, on the eve of battle, an officer confesses that he's scared to death, Wayne admits that he too is scared. We've seen that identical exchange dozens of times. In this case Wayne's deportment didn't convince me he was really scared. He seemed strung out behind 3 milligrams of Xanax.

The novel could have been written with Hollywood in mind because it has all the audience appeal of any other commercial effort -- three (or maybe four) romantic relationships going on at once, bureaucratic intrigue with heroes and villains, and an opening sea battle and an even bigger climactic engagement.

Wendell Mayes, the screenwriter, pulls all these threads together in a way that, while still leaving this a mediocre effort, improves on the book, if only by shortening it.

John Wayne exudes relaxed authority, which is his forte. He could have walked through the part but he does a thoroughly professional job. Kirk Douglas is second in the credits but has a much smaller part as Wayne's competent but tormented assistant. Both men were aging visibly by this time in their careers and at times it seems that Douglas is wearing a Kirk Douglas mask, but Douglas at least gets the few humorous moments in the story.

Brandon De Wilde was splendid as the little boy in "Shane" eleven years earlier, and fine as the naive teen in "Hud." Here, as a Wayne's estranged son, a young Harvard-educated PT boat officer, he's adequate but no more than that.

Patricia Neal is Wayne's girl friend, a savvy but gentle nurse. She's no longer a glamorous kid either, but her face seems careworn and soft. She's a suitable mate for Wayne. Jill Haworth is the saucy young nurse who is engaged to De Wilde but tempts Douglas beyond the point of redemption. She's more figure than talent. There's a third romance between the heroic Tom Tryon and the achingly horny Paula Prentiss, but it's not clear why this narrative thread was left in the script. The intrigues and their dynamics are dazzling enough without it.

The battles were done with models, as was usual at the time, and the special effects are okay for the period, but compare the contemporary "Sink the Bismarck" to see how it could have been more convincingly executed. That last engagement was a bit confusing because when ships are exploding, it's hard to tell one from another.

Historically the whole affair is fiction. Well -- two real figures appear on the screen. Admiral Husband Kimmel (Franchot Tone) who got all the blame for the naval disaster at Pearl Harbor and whose head rolled, and Admiral Nimitz (Henry Fonda) who has two or three short scenes of no particular distinction.

The climactic battle steals elements from Guadalcanal (if we don't stop the Japanese from finishing that airstrip, we're sunk),Surigao Strait (the Japanese are caught by mines and torpedo boats in a narrow channel during a night action),and Leyte Gulf (a super battleship and numerous escorts against a lesser fleet of American ships, with the Japanese turned away at the last minute by a display of American gallantry). Nice black-and-white photography.

It's not a bad movie but rather strictly routine. There are no stand out performances because there are no opportunities for stand out performances. The script is too bland for that. Preminger does manage one actually shocking incident. It takes place in the officer's john, and involves Douglas slapping the evil-looking Patrick O'Neal several times across the face -- hard. Otherwise, it's by the numbers.