even though I enjoyed the movie, every time "the kid" (Tex, Leonard, or whatever his name was)was on the screen chomping on his gum, grinning like a monkey on acid, and constantly saying moronic things I just wanted to throw my PBR thru the screen! I guess it's just that '40s thing where they have to make the goofball in the bunch REALLY goofy so everyone gets the point. Why couldn't he have been the first to go? :)
shareI agree the kid was annoying, and the guy that was always spitting or licking his fingers was disgusting.
shareI was actually rooting for Robert Walker's character to get whacked! I was sorry he made it almost to the end.
"We're fighting for this woman's honor, which is more than she ever did."
I guess the character was there to show the naive serviceman who wants to "kill Japs", not realising what a vicious, deadly engagement it is until the end.
share Before he's killed he says what?
["Bachito buschwhat, you stink"?
That's the best I can do.
" See dat scenery floatin by, you're now approaching NewportRI." Cole Porter
I finished this film minutes ago. He says "Bushido bushwack."
Wiki bushido and you'll understand.
"Rampart: Squad 51."
Bushido bushwah. Bushwah was/is a euphemism for *beep* which was the actual way the ancient Japanese philosophy of "bushido" was referred to by US troops.
More annoying than JarJar Binks? Please.
KS
Rewatched this flick last night. I still wanted "Sailor" to get whacked! Especially in that scene when he doesn't realize the figure he sees in the dark is actually one of the Filipino soldiers who's been strung up by the Japanese. He starts firing the machine gun, the sergeant pulls him away and he's whining like a 5-year-old, "That's MY Jap!" or somesuch.
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"
Just re-watched it. All you all's comments make about as much sense as when someone says "who talks like that" in a military movie. As for the fresh face kid-I went to a military school with kids like that. Hell, I probably was a kid like that. Then reality sets in. It was made in the middle of a war, where kids like that were like that. Period.
I liked the movie. Strong cast.
hqfedlegion is exactly on the money. He has these grumps pegged. They're either too stupid to realize they would have been the same kid in the early forties, or they are so brainwashed they forgot what they were like as kids, or they're lying.
Yeah, before the information age, kids weren't internet computer whiz kids. They were like Walker's character. Not to understand this, is very bizarre. Do these people complaining about the character ever venture outside their little bubbles?
I fart in your general direction
Nothing will steal that title from JarJar ... especially when you consider JarJar came 60 years later and was concocted by the great director George Lucas. Films typically improved in hat time ... and they even had focus groups.
shareYou're referring to Robert Walker, whose son Robert Walker Jr, was virtually the same, an absolute clone of his father, best known as Charlie on the original Star Trek episode where he kept making people disappear if they made him mad, like Billy Mumy as Anthony in It's A Good Life on Twilight Zone.
What's going on here is a very young Robert Walker first of all, but he's supposed to be an over-zealous soldier, much like the 'kickin' butt' behavior in the eighties, perhaps best seen in the second Aliens movie, with Bill Paxton and all those other marine-type characters.
Walker's character was a sailor, not a soldier! Add to that, he was a musician whose launch was sunk when he and his band were traversing (most likely) Tayabas Bay and then he was assigned to whatever local Army detachment was convenient. His character was nothing like Paxton's in Aliens but more of a "fish out of water" as he never trained to be a soldier. Sure, Navy boot camp has firearms training but not in-country combat as the Army or Marines would unless you were actually supposed to be stationed "in country." We do not know what his duty station was supposed to be. His desire to "kill a Jap" was more of a, "well, I'm stuck here and I want to make the best of it." You could see, however, that with every American fatality, he grew more grim and resolute. He never trained for his situation and didn't know what to expect. His character was probably in there to lighten the mood of that dire situation that they all were in, but there was nothing unbelievable or out of place with his character or his acting. I believe this was his first movie role.
KS
HOORAY!! One of the few people who get it. If you consider that Robert Walker's character would probably be more like reality as he wasn't a "professional" soldier (sailor) and I imagine that there were or shortly would be, many American kids thrust into a situation with no real idea of the horror that they faced. That's why the part at the end with him dictating the letter to his mother is so touching; he realized that he was going to die and would never see/have any of the things that he loved again (in this world, anyway).
shareDid his character make sense ... sure ... but there was no need to make him a total idiot with the worlds most annoying voice. I found myself mocking him during the film ... he was that annoying.
share