The Real Glory

THE REAL GLORY is a terrific follow-up to the adventure classic LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER (1936) which saw the previous pairing of star Gary Cooper with director Henry Hathaway. THE REAL GLORY is a 'Boy's Own' style adventure romp through the jungles of the Phillipines following the Spanish-American War. Cooper leads a small band of American soldiers and medical personnel as they train a police force to fight back against vicious Moro pirates who terrorize and prey upon the local villagers. Cooper and co-star David Niven are the perfect Hollywood mix of heroism, gallantry and self-sacrifice. Director Hathaway fills THE REAL GLORY to the brim with rousing action sequences, desperate derring-do and the kind of buckle-swashing that heavily influenced modern classics like Spielberg's RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. An absolutely top-notch film in every department. This is escapist entertainment as only Golden Age Hollywood could produce. If you like 'GUNGA DIN/RAIDERS' style filmmaking then this is a must-see. A perfect Saturday night popcorn film.

A few years earlier, Gary Cooper starred in the very entertaining LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER--an adventure film about an uprising in Afghanistan and the actions of the British army to crush this rebellion. In this case, the film cast made some sense, as Gary Cooper's accent could be explained away by his being a Canadian. But here, we once again have him playing a very similar role as a soldier in the American army but he is surrounded by British actors. They never really explained how the very-British Reginald Owen and David Niven were American soldiers! But, despite this silly casting, the film is highly entertaining and worth seeing--provided you ignore the strange accents. In addition, like LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER, there was a local tribal insurrection that must be eliminated by training loyal locals to fight to ensure the peace. In the case of this film, it is set in the Philippines and based on the very brief Moro uprising towards the beginning of the 20th century. It's the sort of adventure film you can enjoy provided you have only modest expectations--in other words, this isn't deep or philosophical, but more like a traditional Cowboy and Indian movie set in a tropical setting.

I had never even heard of this movie until I viewed it today. Thank God for the library's VHS collection. The plot, five US Army officers are tasked to be military advisors in the establishment of the Phillipine constabulary in 1906. Despite the colonel's plea, the war Department has decided US troops will no longer be responsible for protecting the local people because they will never learn to do it themselves if the US Army does it all. Sound familiar to anyone? The enemy are the Moro insurgents, who just happen to be Muslim. They are bent on establishing a Muslim state and are not too particular about how they do it. The movie points out that not all Moros are bad, not all agree with the radicals and some are quite helpful to the advisors. The plot cautions us however not to take everyone at face value. There are traitors in their midst.

I find the lead (Cooper's) character solutions to winning hearts and minds to be fantastic. The guy could have been a role model for counter insurgency. Perhaps he was the first Green Beret. I won't go into his methods, watch them yourself and then think IRAQ. Of course with 24/7 news cycles and instant communication blended with micro-management it is hard to see this happening today. If we had those things back then, well, the course of history in the Phillipines would have been very different.

All in all, an excellent movie with a great cast highlighting an interesting period of US History that is all but forgotten today. It is interesting to think that people who actually participated in the Phillipine Insurrection were still around when it debuted in 1939.

The film comes to life in some brief flashes of proto-Indiana Jones action. Otherwise, it's a standard melodrama of an occupying fort holding on in hostile country. The unusual setting in the Philippines circa 1910 is under-utilized. For all the difference it makes, the film could easily have been set in the British Raj- or, with only a little rewriting, in a post-Civil War U.S. frontier fort.

This movie is entertaining. It's not intellectually challenging, nor does it have a serious message.

Its moral tone is neutral. It is not didactic: it does not attempt to teach viewers anything (except perhaps how to survive in the Phillipine jungle).

The plot contains many suspenseful situations, and reminded me of the plots of the series of "cliffhanger" short movies I used to see at the cinema. Each item in the series ended in a crisis in which it appeared the hero would certainly perish. This benefited cinema owners by attracting patrons back to see the next item in the series. With this movie, I didn't have to wait a week to view the resolution.