erostew
This probably was not Sam Fuller's lowest budget movie. In fact, if the information here on IMDb is correct, it had a fairly decent budget. But I suspect that makes no difference at all to his style or the movie that he made. There is no CGI, no jump cuts and no shaky-cam. He got his actors to act and made effective use of pyrotechnics and extras to put realistic and horrifying battle on film.I am not a prolific reviewer, in fact I probably average 2 or 3 reviews a year. That's because I normally only bother when a movie makes me feel something (or it really makes me mad). It might be laughter or it might be horror but to me a worthwhile movie has to make you react. And this movie certainly does that. The story is worth telling but like most of Fuller's work the focus is really on the people and not on glory. The acting is superb and supremely believable. The actors in this movie aren't really known for award quality work but they really impress here. Samuel Fuller ignores the usual formulaic tropes and tells the story his way. There's an unneeded intro and a bombastic outro that I suspect were added by the studio but it starts where it starts and ends where it ends. No attempts to make a neat little package.The story is gripping and Fuller makes you feel like you have a personal interest in the outcome. His writing is top notch and tight with no filler. There is no obligatory love interest in this movie and no cheesy flashbacks either. It's relentless and often grim but always effective. I'm not a historian but I feel that it captures the essence of the real life battles.His direction is masterful. From the claustrophobic to the panoramic he makes the land itself an important character in the film. And he gets amazingly good performances from his actors. You can feel their pain and exhaustion.Jeff Chandler is more believable than in any other role that I can think of him playing. Most people have likely forgotten that he was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Cochise in Broken Arrow. That was over-shadowed by the the fact that most of his roles were in B and C-grade pictures. Personally I would rate most of his work as competent but not impressive. However I was very impressed by his portrayal of General Merrill. Sadly this was his last film. He died of complications from back surgery before it was released.One other stand out was Claude Akins. A very competent character actor who really shines in his role as Sergeant Kolowicz. There is a scene with him and a young native boy and an old woman that blew me away. Not a word of dialogue but he makes you feel his pain and it made me tear up in sympathy.The only bad part about this movie is the knowledge that we will never see it's like again. Give one of today's hotshot directors 500 times the budget and he will probably spend 200 million on CGI that will be impressive as heck but won't really make you feel anything at a visceral level. I suspect that it's a difference in life experience. Sam Fuller and most of the actors in this movie actually lived and fought through the Second World War.
andrewglencross65
I'm not going to write a review of this remarkable film but just want to share and echo some thoughts.Yes, the bookends are awful.The(I believe 101st Airborne)on parade at the end of the film is horribly jarring with MM's gritty, malarial jungle tone--but the film remains a favourite from childhood and into my mid 40's.Jeff Chandler, for me, was never better---bit like Gregory Peck being never being better than he was as General Frank Savage in "12 o'clock High" And if THAT film was all about the USAAF's "Maxiumum Effort" THIS is the army's version of it,and Sam Fuller imbues it with the eye of the combat GI.As others have said the battle at Shaduzup is particularly affecting: claustrophobic and just plain hellish.I reckon this sequence is easily Fuller's greatest pure war movie making in the film--and just bloody unforgettable. As others have noted "Stock" walking between the concrete blocks at the battle's end is haunting.Sam Fuller who fought in North Africa/Europe might just have also made the best film about the US Army in the Asia/Pacific theatre here. A theatre of operations that popular imagination tends to be dominated by the USMC.Yeah, there's a cheesy( but appreciated)representation of the Brits in Burma, but Merrill's Marauder's is a war film that never fails to inspire, and demands a DVD release.A remake would be nice too I suppose without the "Battle Cry" footage and cobbled together music, but would it draw you in to the jungle and its ever present Japanese threat in the way that Sam Fuller did? I don't think so.Myktina, Walawbum and Shaduzup.Is it just me or are those names forever locked in your memory?.
chuck-reilly
Sam Fuller's "Merrill's Marauders" (1962) is a realistic account of U.S. Army soldiers fighting the Japanese in the jungles of Burma during World War II. Starring Jeff Chandler as General Frank Merrill, the movie captures the sheer exhaustion of these men as they battle typhoid, malaria, and the perils of jungle warfare under the worst conditions possible. Along for the ride are plenty of stock players from the Warner Brothers roster of the early 1960s including Will Hutchins, Peter Brown and Ty Hardin. Claude Akins also has a prominent role in the cast as does Andrew Duggan as the unit's top M.D. Pushing his men to the extreme, Merrill is soon scorned as a "butcher." What they don't know is that the General is practically dead on his feet himself. Obsessed with completing his mission and following his superior's orders, Merrill finally collapses in a heap. In the final reel, his men march by his outstretched body to go off and fight another brutal battle. Duggan mouths off some unnecessary patriotic nonsense at the end while cradling the stricken General in his arms. Luckily, it doesn't detract from the overall proceedings.Director Sam Fuller, a combat soldier from World War II himself, knows something about war and he instills enough realism in this film for viewers to feel the jungle sweat on their own faces. He later went on to make a movie about his own unit (1980's "The Big Red One"), but this film certainly ranks with his best work. The real Frank Merrill survived the war but died from a heart attack in the mid-1950s. Jeff Chandler didn't last long after this movie either, succumbing to a botched operation at the age of 42.
tieman64
"Do you know what I'm going to do after the war? I'm going to get married and have six kids. Then I'm going to line them up and tell them what Burma was like. And if they don't cry, I'll beat the hell out of them." - Bannister ("Merrill's Marauders")"I don't know how he got that wonderful expression of contempt on her dying face. It was beautiful. It was war. How did Kubrick do that?" – Sam Fuller Samuel Fuller dismissed Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" as a "recruitment film", but he did admire the look of pain and ephemerality in the eyes of a wounded Vietnamese sniper towards the film's climax.Eyes always interested Fuller. His combat movies hinged on the look of burnt out exhaustion in the eyes of his grizzled grunts, his soldiers plagued by fatigue, shell-shock and psychological disorders, trudging through his war zones like the walking dead. Fuller's war films weren't overtly political – they didn't point fingers, didn't place conflicts in any larger context, didn't condemn policy makers or generals. No, he saw himself as a tabloid journalist, marrying his insights into the psychology of the soldier to the kind of pulpy, macho writing of WW2 era pulp fiction and war comics (comics serials such as "Frontline Combat" were popular at the time, often with heroes sporting hardboiled names like Sgt Rock or Captain Tank).So Fuller's war films sport a weird tension, juxtaposing the rough, macho prose of pulp to the insights and sensitivities of an ex soldier and journalist. It's this combination of hard and soft that made Fuller's combat movies special. While most war films of the era, and since, relied on spectacle and technical wizardry, Fuller's films were all about prose. They were word oriented, the text tough, blunt and on the nose, information conveyed fast and to the jugular, his plots unfolding like the rapidly turned pages of a dime store magazine.And so "Merril's Marauders" offers more macho poetry from Sam Fuller. The film - a taunt platoon movie which follows a group of American soldiers on a seemingly suicidal trek through the jungles of Burma - isn't as good as "The Big Red One", "The Steel Helmet" or "Fixed Bayonets", thanks largely to studio interference which forced Fuller to adopt an overtly pro-war stance, but there are still enough excellent passages here to make the ride worthwhile.The plot: it's 1942 and General Stilwell orders Brig. Gen. Frank Merrill's 5307th Composite Unit, aka Merrill's Marauders, to hike 125 miles from India into neighbouring Burma and blow up a Japanese ammo dump. The men complete their mission, and look forward to some well earned R and R, but are instead immediately sent on yet another mission, this time a suicidal assault on a major Japanese base in the city of Myitkyina. If the Marauders are successful, the Japanese army will be unable to unite with the Germans in India. If they're not, at least they died heroes. Right? But for Fuller, it's never about heroism or even completing the mission. It's about staying sane, and about remembering the little tricks of the trade which keep every good soldier alive. Keep your feet dry, dig your fox hole deep and buckle your helmet. And remember, duck when you see a bullet.Enduring malaria, typhus, fatigue, mental illnesses, madness and exhaustion, Fuller's men are suffering from what the unit doctor calls AOE - "accumulation of everything". And it's into these burnt out shells that Fuller takes us, his pen conveying not only the irrationality of their wasted energies, but their physical and psychological discomfort, the grunts degenerating into twisted reflections of what we expect a soldier to be.7.9/10 - Unusual for Fuller, the film begins with an almost Brechtian moment, Fuller clashing his colour photography (was this his first war film in colour?) with newsreel footage. The scene not only makes us question what horrors are lost in the translation to Technicolor/celluloid, but to suggest that what follows will itself be a fusion of documentary and fiction, a war film that is deliberately anti-dramatic, and fragmented, each faint appearance of a narrative arc undermined and undone. Sadly, Fuller's ironic, downbeat ending was scrapped by producers who imposed a coda which is borderline criminal.Worth one viewing. Makes a good companion piece to "Beach Red", "Big Red One", "Steel Helmet", "Fixed Bayonets", "They Fought for The Motherland", "Hell to Eternity" and "Hell in the Pacific".
