A Brigada Gloriosa

This packs a lot of punch for its tight construction.

We go straight to war in the opening shot: the platoon retreats over the makeshift bridge, the camera pulls back on the corps' sign; it jiggles with the concussions from the explosions in the river, then pans over to the embankment -- a complicated shot that says a great deal, but does it economically. The movie ends economically, too, with the battle won, and the two commanders smiling at the results, cuing our response.

I suspect this movie was a template for several modern war features, yet strangely this has gone somewhat overlooked; perhaps, simply because Korea is not an over-filmed war, and we think of it mostly on "MASH"'s terms.

A guerrilla attack on a tank uses an explosive charge under a tank tread -- later used in "The Terminator". A depot is attacked by using distractions, then an infantry charge; the actors' positioning, movements and the camera angles -- the very visual vocabulary of that scene -- are elements that would later appear in "Predator".