Purple Heart (1944)

Dramatization of Fact

Despite what the Blame-America-First crowd might say, Uncle Sam doesn't sit around twisting his beard and hatching racist hegemonistic plots against nations populated predominantly by non-White peoples. The Japanese enemy has pretty much been given a relatively free ride due to the mind-numbing atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis in carrying out their Final Solution. But Allied prisoners had a 99% chance of surviving their stint in a German POW camp. Only 58% survived the Japanese camps and those that did had been reduced to mere skin and bones. The Japanese culture is not hung up on the value of a single human life, especially an enemy who has "dishonored" himself by surrendering. Anyone who thinks that the portrayal of Japanese in "The Purple Heart" is over-the-top American Jingoistic blather should talk to an Allied survivor of a Japanese POW camp. This is a well made, well acted film and an extremely effective piece of propaganda, aimed right dead-center at a more-than-deserving target. July 18, 2008

tough not to like, and yet ...

This movie is tough not to like, and yet it is clearly a propaganda piece of the "Jap-hating" war years.

The plot involves the sham trial of two B-25 crews from the Doolittle raid on Tokoyo captured in occupied China and brought to Japan for trial. The Japanese are besides themselves to determine where the raiding planes came from, and an Army general is convinced it was from a carrier. A naval admiral, responsible for defending the homeland, is equally convinced that it could not have been a carrier raid.

The acting by Dana Andrews and others is fine and you root for the crews as they are subjected to physical abuse and one-sided court room rules to extract the desired information. They are so alone and without defenses other than their trust in one another. And it is that interplay between the crew members and their support for one another that is the strength of the film.

The negative is that this is a war-time film with the Japanese presented as heartless, conniving, semi-humans. You expect at any moment for one of the Japanese officers to say, "So you Yankee dog, you see I understand your country. I U-C-R-A class of 1938!" If you can get past the bash the Japs undercurrent, its an pretty good film. June 24, 2008

A Must See for those who do not with to forget...

Although AMC has the gall to call it "racist propaganda" and portray the Japanese as vicious, Japanse veterans from WWII all tell the same story: how they were, themselves, beaten by their officers, and how they were taught that the Americans were lower than animals, and no cruelty was considered unfit for the Americans.

The movie intimates the brutality and does not show what the Japanese actually did to these brave airmen.

Japanese wartime mentality was animalistic. The rape of Naking, as well as the treatment of American POWs are just two examples of the brutality of these people pre WWII.

Gen. MacArthur, though widely criticized for not prosecuting the Emperor, who had full complicity in war crimes and in the war of aggression, used Hirohito to bring peace. He brought over missionaries and set them up as school teachers, and did an amazing job in de-militarizing the Japanese people and bringing peace to a people who were raised on pagan Emperor worship. He changed their society from the ground up.

No Hollywood movie, thus far, has truly shown how brutal and animalistic the Japanese military were, and this movie is no exception. They did a mock trial and executed these brave men.

For AMC to call it racist propaganda because the judges cheered when news that MacArthur had left Corigidor shows only that they care more for political correctness rather than factual correctness.

don't miss this movie. Never forget what foreign aggression did to our nation while sleeping peacefully on a December Sunday morning, in 1941. Don't forget the bravery of the Doolittle raid, nor of the countless sacrifices made by young men to stop imperialistic barbariansism. June 2, 2008

Purple Heart.

I was a little disapointed with this film unfortunately, as I was always a fan of Dana Andrews in my younger days.
However this is one that I had never seen. I know there are many of his films, and I shall keep on trying to send for the ones that I do like.
Sincerely Blanche Knowles. September 11, 2007

Different WWII film that speaks to the war today

In my quest to see all of the great old films of WWII made in the 1940's, I bought this one and I'm glad I did!
It's very different from the "typical" battle-action films; this one is set mainly in Japan where American Army Air Corps pilots are put on trial for "war crimes."
In the course of their imprisonment, they are tortured to confess to crimes they didn't commit.
They have no real lawyers.
The Geneva Convention is never mentioned.
They go bravely and proudly to their deaths by execution.
All of it highlights not only the humane treatment we give enemy combatants now at Guantanamo Bay but also the fanatical aim of world domination of today's Islamofacist enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan is exactly like that of the Shinto/Bushido Japanese that we vanquished in WWII.
This movie is really a must see that acurately portrays the enemy in wartime as truly evil with none of the moral equivalence that we get from Hollywood and the Media these days. June 27, 2007

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