Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Jerrie It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Prismark10 Big Jim McLain is a hilariously bad propaganda film. If it was made by the Nazis, the cast and crew would had got medals from Goebbels.John Wayne surely was doing his best to avoid being labelled as a commie (it was made in conjunction with his own production company.)Big Jim McLain (John Wayne) and his partner even bigger Mal Baxter (James Arness) are investigators for the House Un-American Activities Committee. They have been sent to Hawaii to round up some local Communists. They visit Dr Gelster a psychiatrist who is treating one of the party members. While there, McLain charms the doctor's secretary, Nancy Vallon (Nancy Olson) and asks her out. McLain and Baxter become targets of the local communist head honcho, really tall Sturak (Alan Napier.)It is left to James Arness to really ham up his character's anti communist credentials. Oh if only he could get his hands on those reds under the beds. He fought in Korea you know.Wayne is too busy being a tourist and trying to charm Olson who he met on his first day ashore. Although raucous party girl Veda Ann Borg is also interested to know how big John McLain really is.Napier is suave and despicable going around in expensive cars treating the lower ranked members of the party with disdain. It is a laughably bad and camp film. You have a nurse who once dabbled with the reds and talks about being a communist like being struck down by a disease. She does penance by working with ill children.Given the mayhem caused by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s. Wayne should had burned the negatives.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . I'll try to summarize its main take-aways. Though BIG JIM seems on its surface to be one of those gut-busting spy-versus-spy spoofs not unlike Peter Sellers' original version of CASINO ROYALE, closer examination proves it to be a fiendishly clever (if only partially successful, given the mixed bag of people making up American movie goers) effort on the part of Warner Bros.' screenwriters and editors to expose the title character as a Real Life Communist operative. Why else make John Wayne the face of HUAC, just as that bunch of inept Witch Hunters are becoming a national laughing stock? Why else make Patriotic Americana so hokey (with Daniel Webster voice-overs, nonstop grade school Flag Day ditties, and a cameo by the USMC Band, for Cripe's sake!) that even Uncle Sam might barf from the sugary overdose? Why such a ludicrously implausible plot? (C'Mon, Pinko American Economics Professors shooting at U.S. Marines in Korea?! Give us a break!) Practically everything out of "Big Jim's" (John Wayne's) mouth comes off as a joke on him--he rhymes the plural of "subpoenae" with "weenies" (showing that even Warner's dialect coach was in-the-know about the plot to make Wayne seem more out-of-touch with Real Life America than usual). Honoring its heart-in-the-right-place attempt to unmask Wayne--who parrots a line here wishing that the U.S. Constitution apply just to rich "Conservatives," echoing the Stalinist take on Socialist Principles--Warner's 2007 DVD release for BIG JIM brackets Wayne between a scandalously mercenary "Joe McDoakes" and Daffy Duck, providing their verdict that "The Duke" was totally Looney Tunes.

JimB-4 Before getting into the political aspects of this film and the reviews posted here, I wish to correct a couple of misstatements in other reviews. 1: John Wayne never testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and 2: Senator Joseph McCarthy had nothing whatsoever to do with the House investigation of Communism in Hollywood (he was a Senator, and not a member of the House; McCarthy's Senate investigation was into Communism in the Army and the State Department). Now, the film: reasonable people can disagree on matters of import, whether they are political issues or social, cultural, or religious issues. But Hollywood -- the commercial, money-making Hollywood -- rarely does nuance. And all nuance is missing from this film's attempt to portray what its makers saw as a grave threat. I would like to think that Hollywood was capable, even in the midst of the paranoia of the early 1950s, to create an anti-communist film that truly explored the issues and compared and contrasted the viewpoints at play in the country at that time. But I'm unaware of any film of the time that did so and did it well. Virtually every anti-communist film that came out of the Red Scare period is as nuanced as a sledgehammer hitting a muffin. This film is one of the worst examples. I love John Wayne, regardless of his politics, and he's fine in this. But it is embarrassing for me as a citizen of the U.S. to know that this was not only the nadir of film-making of the time on this subject, but actually as high as the intelligence level of such films ever got! Everything is black and white, belief in one system is good, belief in another is irredeemable evil. Horns sprouting from the heads of the communists among the characters would not have been surprising. And whatever side you might find yourself on in this ancient argument, viewers do not deserve to be treated as idiots. I suspect that even intellectual anti-communists hated this film and must have thought something along the lines of "Get off our side!" As much as I love Wayne and his films, I find it necessary to pretend Big Jim McLain is investigating pedophiles or some such, if I want to get through this movie. The arguments used against the commies in this movie are about what you'd hear in a cops-vs.-pedophiles movie. "Them bad, us good. Ugh."

yardbirdsraveup I know what you're all thinking. Yes, most of the comments center on the anti-Communist agenda of the late 40's to the mid-50's and rightly so. John Wayne was one of those actors who believed in "CYA" (cover your 'butt') when it came to keeping his job in Hollywood. And rightly so again! With the likes of Wayne and cravens like Elia Kazan, they chose to appease the witch hunters rather than stand up to them. Unfortunately this did more harm than good; many of their associates (great performers like Howard Da Silva, John Garfield and Betty Garrett) were banned for years if not for life.This movie was a product of those who wanted to convince the modern day inquisition called the House on Unamerican Activities that they were genuine flag waving, apple pie eating homies. Obviously the ruse worked.However I'm straying from my one line summary here. I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed the subliminal content of this film. Yes, it reeks of good ol' flag waving Americanism vs the no-good commies, but has anyone noticed the "law and order" theme of this film? Has anyone noticed that it takes place in (of all places) Hawaii, which was then only a "Protectorate" of the United States? Hawaii didn't get statehood until 1959, seven years after this film was released. I really believe (I wonder if anyone else does!) that the movers and shakers of 60's television got the idea of "Hawaii 5-0" from this film. There are quite a few similarities. First of all, the head honcho is a white guy (Jack Lord, John Wayne). Secondly, they both hunt down criminals (Lord goes after the common garden variety type and Wayne goes after the same, only a little "redder"). Thirdly, both "law and order" agencies are based in Hawaii (why?) and finally, the guys who work with John Wayne in the film are actual Hawaiians whose acting is as stilted and crummy as the Hawaiians who try to act in the TV show!!!Finally, I ask "why"??? Am I imagining all of this or does someone else out in the ether have the same opinion as I do? Somebody, please tell me if this is so!