Review of Wake Island (1942) by Richard D — 14 Dec 2017

The story of the Battle of Wake Island told from the perspective of a couple of unruly Marines (Robert Preston and William Bendix), their commanding officer (Brian Donlevy) and a civilian construction contractor (Albert Dekker).

Made right near the beginning of the American involvement in the war and just a few months after the events depicted, the film is understandably basically just a rallying cry for the American public. Does it succeed on those terms? Not really.

The film takes the form of a story about not very good people finding the best in themselves when facing adversity. The problem is that most of these characters are such awful people, I completely fail to care about them at all, even when they take on waves of invading Japanese soldiers.