Eight Iron Men

Can't recall when I've seen a better war picture. I've seen lots of them with more action, as this is mainly a talking picture, but this one features extraordinarily good acting performances from the entire cast. Especially good was Bonar Colleano, who is the central figure in the story. He is the Wise-Guy-From-The-Bronx, a character movie directors and writers liked to insert into their work, and Colleano makes the most of his star turn.

As with all movies reviewed on the website, the plot has been restated by all contributors, but just let me say it seems mainly like a filmed stage play. But the film is not static and the action moves at a brisk pace, if you can imagine this in a movie with basically one set. We get to learn about each platoon member as characters are fleshed out to a remarkable degree, so that we understand what motivates each one.

Noteworthy, apart from Colleano is Lee Marvin, here honing his tough guy credentials, and Nick Dennis with much more of a part than he normally was used to. I thought Barney Phillips, a good actor himself, was miscast as the Captain. He was just too old for the part - if you have been in the service you would spot it right away. Ol' reliable TCM aired this one the other day, and it is very worth watching.

Producer Stanley Kramer and Director Edward Dmytryk deliberately chose a cast of unknowns who later did move on to varying degrees of success in the film industry, most notably Lee Marvin, for the cast of Eight Iron Men.

It's a tense situation for this squad in some small town on the Italian front in World War II. One of their number is pinned down by a machine gun and it's wearing on the nerves of the other seven. Especially when they get orders to pull back and leave him until replacements come.

The film shows the tension on all of them. Lee Marvin with his war experience in the Pacific Theater is a natural as the concerned sergeant. Other good performances are from Arthur Franz, Richard Kiley, Nick Dennis, and most of all Bonar Colleano whose career was mostly in the United Kingdom. This was one of the few American made films for the New York City expatriate.

Eight Iron Men is based on a flop play on Broadway by Harry Brown which ran only 23 performances in 1945 and featured Sam Levene and a most unknown Burt Lancaster. Obviously someone named Harry Cohn didn't want to pay Lancaster's going rate in 1952 to get him for the screen version.

Even without Burt, Eight Iron Men is a well made war drama and should not be missed.

Based on a 1945 play by Harry Brown, this dreary movie moves between standard banter between men in a somewhat stressful situation (the bombed out rubble of a house in Italy) who are ordered out but are reluctant to leave a pinned down member of the platoon, and dream sequences that are painful, and populated by Rita Hayworth look-a-likes. While an excellent example of the continuing development of the persona of Lee Marvin, and containing one of last performances of Bonar Colleano, who would be killed in an auto accident a few years later, it is really a vehicle for several Hollywood character actors whose faces but not names come readily to mind (Arthur Franz, Richard Kiley (pre LaMancha), Barney Phillips and James Griffith). Not available on DVD or VHS, it surfaces occasionally on TV in connection with Lee Marvin retrospectives. That is the only reason to see this film.

At first may seem like a poorly written and acted movie but you must REMEMBER that this movie was made in 1952 and one must use his/her imagination to fill in the missing special effects that we've been forced to endure.

Many movies of the era used the same format but the movie was about individual soldiers and not the war. I'm sure combat veterans would be better suited to comment on the goodness/badness of the film but suspect they would like it.

Maybe Lee Marvin's first starring role? But the character of Sergeant Joe Mooney was carried out thru his career and it is always a pleasure to watch.

A good movie for its time and remains so in my humble opinion.

A mix of "Stalag 17" and television's "Combat" series (which it inspired), "Eight Iron Men" (1952) is my favorite war movie. Made when Director Edward Dmytryk was still paying attention to his acting for the camera direction, "Eight Iron Men" is Harry Brown's adaptation of his play "A Sound of Hunting". Brown would later write one of the more classic episodes of "Combat".

Dmytryk, noted for his action sequences, was smart enough to concentrate on the play's extremely clever repartee between the members of an infantry squad who are marking time in the ruins of a destroyed town in Europe late in WWII. Squad leader Sgt. Mooney (Lee Marvin) has somehow managed to keep his group intact up to this point of the war. His goal of leaving the town with all seven of his men is threatened when the squad's most inept member Private Small (George Cooper) gets himself pinned down in a shell-hole; a few yards away from a well-protected German machine gun nest.

With orders to pull back the squad is torn between disobeying or abandoning their buddy to the Germans. Their decision is further complicated by not knowing if Small is still alive. Once this situation has been fleshed out, Dmytryk builds up the tension as it becomes closer and closer to the time they must leave.

By the end of the film you feel like you know all the six of Mooney's multi-ethnic squad members. There is a comedian (Nick Dennis), a hot-head (Richard Kiley), a pragmatist (Arthur Franz), a cub scout (Dickie Moore), a war-weary dreamer (James Griffith), and a dame obsessed gold brick (Bonar Colleano).

Much like "Das Boot" and "Cross of Iron", the members of the squad have shared so many intense experiences that they have become closer to each other than they ever were to their own family members. This makes their choice even more difficult.

Like the best anti-war films, "Eight Iron Men" is full of hard-bitten cynicism as a group of humans try to maintain their dignity in an insane environment. The face of war is gritty-not glamorous in "Eight Iron Men" and the film is not for those looking for fast edits and flashy action sequences.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.