Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

GManfred This was, of course, a sequel to "Bataan:, a much better action war picture than "Back To Bataan", which comes perilously close to 'pot boiler' status. Lots of dialogue and extended treks through dense jungle, but then saved by two very good fire fights. Sequels never are as good as the original, and that's true here - even with John Wayne in charge.This picture contains one of the most far-fetched sequences ever recorded on film, as Anthony Quinn gets permission to leave the tense Philippine jungle fighting to visit his girlfriend in Manila! I almost lowered my rating by a couple of stars, but John Wayne gave the order - who's going to argue with the Duke?6/10 - The IMDb website no longer prints my star rating.

screenman Big John Wayne stars in this pacific actioner surrounding the defence of the Phillipines. He's fairly young and the solid larger-than-life character he quickly became is just on the cusp of development here.Anthony Quinn lends his ambiguous racial identity to the Phillipinos, playing the mythical grandson on their former hero.It's an old movie, so the violence and cruelty is a measure of what censors of the time (1945) would allow. Lots of people back home had sons and husbands fighting the Japs, imprisoned or returning and it probably wouldn't do to show them how bad things could actually get. Quite honestly; I've yet to see any movie that adequately portrays Japanese brutality with the kind of frankness that we see in some of the more recent movies about the Nazis. It's long past time that this was done, even at the risk of ruffling a few Nipponese feathers.This movie gives a Hollywood take on the conflict. Allied prisoners interned by the Japanese are released full-bodied, fresh-faced and clean-shaven. Likewise the jungle fighters look as though they're on the way to a parade ground. Some set-pieces are stagy to say the least.It's filmed in B&W which gives the movie a nice 'period' feel. The budget seems to have been pretty limited by usual standards. Even so, it still makes for an adequate watch if you've nothing better to do.I personally like old movies. So the £2 I paid at the local supermarket represented something of an investment. I only wish they'd turn out more of 'em.

sol The film "Back to Battan" starts and ends with the January 30, 1945 US/Filipino raid on the infamous Cabanatuan Japanese prison camp on Luzon Island as the allied troops rout the Japanese defenders, that number some 2,000 to 5,000 men, at the cost of only 4 killed and 21 wounded with not even a single US/Filipino POW being lost in the battle. The movie then goes back some three years to the spring of 1942 during the darkest days of the Japanese advance on Battan. US Col. Madden, John Wayne, and his men are fighting for their lives holding back wave after wave of suicidal Japanese Banzai attacks as the lights slowly go out for the American and Philippine forces. With the US general in command of the Philippines Douglas MacArthur being called back to Australia to regroup the battered and defeated US Army for another shot at the invincible army navy and air force of the Empire of Japan things look very bleak for the American and Filipino troops still left on the islands.The film almost entirely concentrates on the guerrilla war conducted by Col. Joe Madden and Capt. Andres Bonifacio (Anthony Quinn), the grandson of the late 19th and early 20th century Filipino patriot and freedom fighter Andres Bonifacio the first. The guerrilla war lasted for two and a half years made it possible for the successful allied invasion of Latye in the fall of 1944. There's also Anders' girlfriend pretty Filipino radio personality Dolici Dalgado, Fely Franquelli, who's the Tokyo Rose of Minlia. Dolici is mouthing off on the radio Japanese propaganda to the Philippine people but in reality is working for US, which her boyfriend Andres who's totally unaware of it. Dolici puts secret code words into her commentaries to alert the US and allied, Philippine, troops where the Japanese Army is making it's next move.One of the better WWII Hollywood war movies with John Wayne needing help from the locals and also being berated and pushed around by who I at first thought was the leader of the allied troops on the Islands,she sure as hell acted like she was, history teacher Bertha Barnes, Beulah Bondi. There's also a number of really exciting battle sequences between the US/Filipino troops and Japanese forces that didn't come across phony and overly one-sided, like in the battles of Battan and the Island fortress of Corrigidor,where the "Japs" actually won, like in most WWII movies coming out of Hollywood at that time.There were two scenes in the movie "Back to Battan" that really moved me and that had very little to do with any fighting. The first when high school Principle J. Bello, Vladimir Sokoloff, refuses to pull down the American flag on the orders of Japanese officer Captain Abner Biberman and then was hanged in it's place. The second scene was when 15 year-old Philippine high-school student Maximo Cuerca, Duckie Louie, was forced to betray, after being tortured by the Japanese, his fellow freedom fighters and American allies. Maximo gave up his life taking the lives of his Japanese tormentors with him by forcing the truck he was on, by grabbing the steering wheel, to go off an embankment killing everyone on board in order to warn Col. Madden's men that they were soon to be ambushed.The real heavy fighting was saved for last with the return to the Philippines of the American forces under the leadership of "I Shall Return" General Douglas MacArthur in the invasion and battle of Latye Gulf in October 1944. The invasion that culminated, in the movie, with the liberation of the Cabantuan POW Prison Camp in late January of 1945. We see, as the movie ends, a number of actual US POW's not actors in the film from some half dozen different states, Texas Alabama Kansas Tennessee Illinois and even Brooklyn New York. All these POW's who were just liberated are seen ecstatically marching to the trumping and heart-lifting tune of "California Here I Come".

gregcostello I agree that this is a terrific movie, and by "History vs. Hollywood" standards rates fairly high. The point of the movie is to characterize the Japanese soldiers as brutal and often sadistic in their treatment of the enemy. In the history of modern warfare, the Japanese in WWII were by far the most inhumane. There is nothing in this movie that is unfair in the portrayal of Japanese treatment of Filipinos. Later, American and other Allied POW's were subjected to even worse horrors. The film also correctly characterizes the Filipinos as tough, hard fighters, and unfortunate victims of a superior Imperialist (militarist) society, which was run by the Japanese Army, and victimized with extreme prejudice. I will disagree with one contributor to this forum who offers that the brutal treatment of Filipinos was one of the reasons for entering the war. Not so. The reason for entering the war was the gradual aggressive military movements of Japan spanning the previous 20 years, culminating in the invasion of China followed by the attack on Pearl Harbor.