ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Edgar Allan Pooh " . . . than bears," 'Ordinary Joe' Al Schmid tells his girlfriend Ruth on the eve of his WWII enlistment into the U.S. Marines. This interchange came in a fact-based movie made the year that America nuked Japan twice, decades before Congress enabled Japanese companies such as Sony to wrest control of the major U.S. film studios and rewrite history to their liking. Since kids today wouldn't be caught dead watching black and white flicks, the only version of The Truth they get is a pack of revisionist lies. If it were possible to hijack a lecture hall full of American college students and compel them to sit through "PRIDE OF THE MARINES," there might be hope for us. However, more than half of such a captive audience would be comprised of "exchange students," sent here to learn our vulnerable spots. Perhaps clairvoyance of today's realities (or of his own assassination a few years later by rabid Congressman Joseph McCarthy) helped actor John Garfield instill so much anger into his character, real life hero Schmid. Sure, Al's a little upset when circumstances force him to gun down 200 Japanese troops in just four hours on Guadacanal (far above his native Pennsylvania's bag limit for bears), despite being blinded by a grenade exploding in his face. But right up to the happy ending, he's "loaded for bear," and rightfully so.

RanchoTuVu John Garfield plays a Marine who is blinded by a grenade while fighting on Guadalcanal and who has to learn to live with his disability. He has all the stereotypical notions about blindness, and is sure he'll be a burden to everyone. The hospital staff and his fellow wounded Marines can't get through to him. Neither can his girl back home played by Eleanor Parker. He's stubborn and blinded by his own fears, self pity, and prejudices. It's a complex role that Garfield carries off memorably in a great performance that keeps one watching in spite of the ever present syrupy melodrama. The best scenes are on Guadalcanal, where he's in a machine gun nest trying to fend off the advancing Japanese soldiers in a hellish looking night time battle, and later a dream sequence in the hospital where he sees himself walking down a train platform with a white cane, dark glasses, and holding out a tin cup, all the while his girlfriend walks backward away from the camera.

Michael Bo In the immediate aftermath following World War II, sound minds in Hollywood tried to distance themselves from the mindless flag-waving that is a natural ingredient in a war effort. "Best Years of Our Lives' and even 'Gentleman's Agreement' investigated the way Americans looked at themselves in the wake of the war, but Delmer Daves' "Pride of the Marines" beat them to it.The film is about Philadelphia smart alec John Garfield who goes to war as a marine and after a nightmarish evening in a foxhole, with Japanese soldiers eerily crying out at him and his buddies "Mariiines, tonight you die!", he is blinded by a hand-grenade, and dumps his girlfriend back home rather than have to depend on her after coming home.Delmer Daves is uncompromising in his depiction on these men who are brave, as it were, almost by coincidence. They are there, in the foxhole, and when shot at, they react. So much for heroism, but they get the job done. And then comes the self-pity, the dark, gloomy sense of humor. Garfield is in angry denial of his blindness and the film makes no excuses, "There's no free candy for anyone in this world", as his buddy tells him. The same guy, a Jew, played by Dane Clark, reminds him, "In a war somebody gets it, and you're it. Everybody's got problems! When I get back, some guys won't hire me, because my name is Diamond".Great movies are made with guts like these, and if the first half hour of 'Pride of the Marines' fails to rise to the occasion completely, from then on it evolves into a true work of art. You weep, and you ponder, you ache and you hope against hope. Well, simply: art.

semperfijack This was one of the better or best WWII movies of its time. It hasn't been shown on TV in quite a while and am wondering why. John Garfield was perfect as Al Schmid, the blinded hero of Guadalcanal. The action sequence of him holding off a superior Japanese force with a machine gun was spellbinding. He was awarded the Navy Cross although I thought he should have gotten the Medal of Honor. Why isn't this movie on VHS or DVD? He was one of the real heroes of the Pacific war and his story should be available to today's generation. Instead we were bombarded by the media of Pvt Jessica Lynch who never even fired her weapon at anyone and came home a hero. Where is the justice?