This rarely shown film was on UK commercial TV channel '5 USA'.
Though Hell to Eternity fans out to being a fairly standard WWII war drama, for me it was the opening scenes and background circumstances that make this one stand out above many others.
'Yanks vs Japs' movies do tend to be two-a-penny, it seems but lead character Guy Gabaldon (a very good, determined Jefrey Hunter) was brought up from a young age by a Japanese family after his mother dies, in his California community. By the time of Pearl Harbour, and as a young adult, he sees his Japanese siblings as his brothers and of the same blood and race - therefore you can see and appreciate his heartbreak and dilemma on conscription and he is sent out to the Pacific.
His knowledge of the Japanese language becomes a huge asset and he becomes a war hero when he uses this talent to get an enemy battalion to surrender and the film is essentially a biopic of him and his story.
Fortunately, despite much that could be over-sentimentalised, it never gets too cloying and the dialogue remains pretty much matter of fact, i.e. realistic. It's in quite a flat, grey black & white and it's quite long, but worth sitting through. It doesn't say anything that new and the action won't have you shell-shocked but quite a decent movie, if you can catch it.
Though Hell to Eternity fans out to being a fairly standard WWII war drama, for me it was the opening scenes and background circumstances that make this one stand out above many others.
'Yanks vs Japs' movies do tend to be two-a-penny, it seems but lead character Guy Gabaldon (a very good, determined Jefrey Hunter) was brought up from a young age by a Japanese family after his mother dies, in his California community. By the time of Pearl Harbour, and as a young adult, he sees his Japanese siblings as his brothers and of the same blood and race - therefore you can see and appreciate his heartbreak and dilemma on conscription and he is sent out to the Pacific.
His knowledge of the Japanese language becomes a huge asset and he becomes a war hero when he uses this talent to get an enemy battalion to surrender and the film is essentially a biopic of him and his story.
Fortunately, despite much that could be over-sentimentalised, it never gets too cloying and the dialogue remains pretty much matter of fact, i.e. realistic. It's in quite a flat, grey black & white and it's quite long, but worth sitting through. It doesn't say anything that new and the action won't have you shell-shocked but quite a decent movie, if you can catch it.