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."
Review of Big Jim McLain
