BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Suman Roberson It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Leofwine_draca GO FOR BROKE! is a standard WW2 B-movie with an interesting basis: it tells of a platoon of Japanese-American troops fighting on the side of America against Nazi Germany during the war. Inevitably this is based on a true story and covers an aspect of the conflict that you don't really hear much about these days.Van Johnson plays the platoon's lieutenant, initially sceptical and rather racist when he hears about his new unit, but gradually developing a grudging form of respect for his men. The Asian actors are all fine, sympathetic, and convincing in their parts. The battle scenes are quite low rent and not always convincing, but they're delivered with enough gusto to make them entertaining.

Chase_Witherspoon Tepid account of Japanese-Americans fighting alongside their colleague allies against the Germans in WWII. Van Johnson is a military liaison lieutenant responsible for merging the unpopular, yet patriotic soldiers with the regular divisions. Predictably, they succeed in taking an important military post from the Germans in a bloody battle in the Ardennes.While there's glimpses of a routine war flick, it's frequently punctuated by long discourses on racial prejudice and otherwise political jingoism of the most shameless kind. Johnson is typically likable as the by-the-book uniform who marches his ragtag bunch of cultural misfits into GI Joe exemplars. His rapport with his men leads him to defend them in the face of racial and cultural discrimination, even to the extent he'll beat one of his own mates black & blue for uttering the slur "Jap". He plays the congenial moralist well, but the contrasts are so blatant, that the film comes off looking like a defence recruitment promotion (the largely unknown cast doesn't add anything in quality either).Some of the battle scenes are hardy and well staged (the Irish-Japanese-American O'Hara eats a flying pine tree in one of the more imaginative battle deaths) and the title expression "Go For Broke" is given a run as such you won't soon forget the name of the film. But that's not the same as memorable content, and this, in my opinion, has little to recommend.

grahamsj3 Van Johnson reports as Platoon Leader of a part of a Japanese-American outfit (the 442) during WW2. His prejudice against Japanese is evident from the start, as is the obvious dislike of the Japaneses troops to having a Caucasian Lieutenant. My only complaint is that the basic story has been done so many times before. In typical fashion, he learns (eventually) to respect these men as they fight their way across Italy and France. While the story is a bit trite, the acting is excellent. The combat parts of the film are very well done, especially for their time. The film is a more or less true story of one of the most highly decorated outfits ever to fight in an American uniform. Well worth a watch!

akiume Being a third generation Japanese-American (Sansei), and having my parents interned in the camps, this movie has a special place in my heart. Robert Pirosh did an incredible job in getting so much information about the Japanese- American situation: the camps, the differences between the Hawaiian and State- side Japanese (Kotonks and Kanakas), the different views of the war and even using a Japanese curse word as a password! I was so impressed and pleased with the results.The movie follows the exploits of the 442, the first all-Nisei (Japanese- American) Regimental combat team in WWII. In early 1942, all the Japanese- Americans in California, Seattle, Oregon and Hawaii were uprooted from their homes and put into camps. All the volunteers were from the 10 internment camps throughout the western states. They felt that this was the only way to prove to the U. S. that they were as patriotic as anybody else, in fact most of them were American Citizens! Since they had nothing to lose, but their lives, their motto was "GO FOR BROKE!" and that's what they did. They are today the most decorated battalion in the history of the U.S. military and proved something that they shouldn't have to be proved, that they were Americans!Van Johnson is used as the "white man" foil, to show how the rest of the country looked at the Japanese-American, and he does a great job. He starts off as a bigot, but as he begins to understand and respect his troops, he becomes one of them. There's a funny scene where one of his men call him "BAKATARE",which is a curse word close to "Damn, stupid...." and tells him that the soldier is being very polite, he's bowing as he says this. This film has everything: humor, action, great characters and... truth!