Stometer
Save your money for something good and enjoyable
Fluentiama
Perfect cast and a good story
Matho
The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.
Alex da Silva
Colonel John Wayne (Madden) stays to fight in Bataan against the Japanese who have conquered the region. He is helped by Philippino Resistance Leader Anthony Quinn (Bonifácio). The story is based on true events when the Japanese had the upper hand. The Duke manages to be on the winning side come the end, though.The film is OK and the battle shelling is powerfully portrayed but we don't really get a sense of camaraderie. We have a love story that is touched upon between Quinn and radio broadcaster Fely Franquelli (Delgado) which provides a degree of human drama but I'm afraid the whole school sub-story falls flat. The sentimental contrivance of the school kid and the teacher Beulah Bondi (Miss Barnes) is totally ghastly. Bondi is really irritating in this film, seemingly taking over and ordering people about. My wife and I spent the film wishing that John Wayne would shoot her. Unfortunately, this never happened.Wayne does OK and some scenes are done well – the flag raising/hanging scene – but there is something flat about this effort. Watch "Bataan" (1943) for a much better effort on this topic.
Edgar Allan Pooh
. . . as "Capt. Andres Bonifacio," who leads his countrymen in a three-year battle to liberate their nation from the Imperialist Japanese Occupiers through a courageous campaign of guerrilla warfare. While high-ranking U.S. military officers were popularizing the Game of Golf in Australia, and their Yankee enlisted men and subordinate squad coordinators from the rank of lieutenant on down (including the twelve freed Real Life P.O.W.s shown marching to the song "California, Here We Come" during BACK TO BATAAN) starved in Prison Camps (if they had not been first shot in the head or clubbed to death like Baby Seals during the "Bataan Death March"), the Filipinos took Destiny by the horns and galloped to Freedom. One of my Great Grandmothers attended a Midwestern college located next to a World War II American P.O.W. facility, and she said the prisoners there ate like kings. BACK TO BATAAN shows that the nefarious Axis tricked us into having them Eat Our Lunch in the 1940s. With Today's freeways being clogged by convoys of Japanese, Italian, and German makes (such as Toyota, Chrysler, and Mercedes), it's obvious that the Axis is having the "Last Laugh" by STILL eating out lunch!
lastliberal
John Wayne and Anthony Quinn star in this important story about the Philippine resistance in WWII.Sure, you won't see the excitement of Pear Harbor or the Battle of Midway, but what you will see is a film dedicated to the Philippine heroes and patriots. There is a lot of history here, including the infamous Bataan Death March. The resistance fought the Japanese until the Americans returned to Leyte.After over 100 westerns, this was one of Wayn'e first war films. Beulah Bondi was superb as a teacher/nurse working in the villages.A great story of heroes that have not gotten their due.
robertherrera
The school teacher got it wrong in the movie. The last poem of Jose Rizal was misquoted in the movie. Here is the English translation provided at the Jose Rizal website, http://www.joserizal.ph/in01.html, maintained by Jose Rizal University in the Philippines (note second paragraph):Farewell, my adored Land, region of the sun caressed, Pearl of the Orient Sea, our Eden lost, With gladness I give you my Life, sad and repressed; And were it more brilliant, more fresh and at its best, I would still give it to you for your welfare at most.On the fields of battle, in the fury of fight, Others give you their lives without pain or hesitancy, The place does not matter: cypress laurel, lily white, Scaffold, open field, conflict or martyrdom's site, It is the same if asked by home and Country.
