Mission Over Korea

I expected far worse from this Fred Sears' Korean war movie, especially starring the bland John Hodiak. But I have to admit that I was a bit satisfied, not excited, but glad enough to put this film in the top batch of what Fred Sears usually gave us. I don't care about the footage; for a cheap war film such as this one, I perfectly understand it. For instance, the Lesley Selander Korean war films were no better, if not worse, than this very one. Of course, there are clichés but the overall result is satisfying. I have rarely seen a good Korean war film, except MEN IN WAR, or some Lewis Milestone's stuff. But the latest was not Fred Sears, far from that, you can't compare.

Quite how this second feature ended up with the cast it got is a puzzle. Mission to Korea is strictly bottom of the bill stuff, a standard war story directed unimaginatively by Fred F. Sears. Somehow, Fred ended up with Rex Reason, Audrey Totter, and Maureen O'Sullivan in his picture, and they all add a gloss of professionalism to this otherwise standard programmer. Perhaps producer Robert Cohn--nephew of Columbia strong man Harry Cohn--twisted his uncle's arm. At any rate, O'Sullivan still looks beautiful, Totter does her slinky ingenue thing in uniform, and Reason is solid and reliable. There's some decent aerial footage, but not much in the story department, which revolves around aviators in the Korean War.

This may have been the last Korean War picture filmed while the conflict was still going on, because it premiered just days after the war ended. But it's actually set at the very beginning of the war, which is sort of unusual. All the action takes place in the summer of 1950, a particularly desperate time for South Korea and for American forces.

History buffs and military enthusiasts should find this interesting, because it looks at what U.S. troops were up against at that critical moment. The "mission" in the title is survival, and the tone of the movie is often grim. The characters are not winning big battles but mostly just holding off the enemy, helping trapped units retreat and working to form a secure perimeter.

To add a bit of realism, there's footage of South Korean soldiers in combat, and there are scenes of black soldiers fighting alongside whites. (The Korean War was the first modern U.S. conflict without racial segregation in the ranks.) Such things were often ignored in Korean War films of the '50s.

John Hodiak and John Derek play U.S. pilots caught in the thick of things. Hodiak's character is a by-the-book captain, while Derek's is a brash young lieutenant, reckless and often insubordinate. The difficult relationship between them as they're tried in combat is the backbone of the story. It's not a great story, and to tell the truth, most of the characters are war movie stereotypes. Besides the two feuding officers, these walking clichés include a Korean orphan boy, a beautiful Army nurse (played by Audrey Totter) and two wisecracking but brave enlisted men.

This was one of Hodiak's last movies and his next-to-last war film. Like Van Johnson, he was unable to serve in World War II due to medical issues but looked so natural in uniform that he got typecast in movies of that period as a military man. But Hodiak, unlike Johnson, succumbed to his health problems at a young age and was not around long enough to get beyond the typecasting. It's too bad we never got to see his full range.