Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

bkoganbing Stepping into the hero/heel part that Tyrone Power specialized in while at 20th Century Fox is John Payne as the spoiled kid of a former Marine officer, Minor Watson. Payne's hoping to get out of the Marines for a nice desk job in Washington, DC, but Watson's hoping that his former sergeant Randolph Scott, now a drill instructor will give Payne the necessary attitude adjustment.Payne's getting an attitude adjustment in another direction too. He's fallen for pretty nurse Maureen O'Hara even though he's got Washington society girl Nancy Kelly pulling strings for him.The part is such a perfect one for Tyrone Power that I'm sure it was offered to him and rejected and given to Payne who was hired by Darryl Zanuck because of his resemblance to Power and the fact he could sing opposite Alice Faye and Betty Grable. Power did similar roles in A Yank in the Raf and Crash Dive and in fact did serve in the Marines in the South Pacific after 1943. The film was shot on location at the San Diego Marine training station and I visited San Diego a few years back and some of it looks pretty much the same. Harry Morgan made his feature film debut and if you look close you'll see that another one of the Marine recruits is the Skipper himself, Alan Hale, Jr.To the Shores of Tripoli is badly dated and doesn't play real well against today's attitudes. Still it's a great example of a World War II propaganda piece.

pageiv I never heard of this movie until I saw it on FMC. As a former Marine I thought it stellar, though I'd never consider it a "war flick". Like the synopses says, it's about a cocky recruit and a hard core sergeant that knew his dad in WWI trying to turn him around.I'm amazed at the poor ratings here, there isn't much action, which may explain the 5.8 vote here, but the all star cast gives a knock down performance.The best part of this is a remembrance when Hollywood would line up for the military's help in making a movie with it shot at MCRD San Diego.This movie isn't about rouge officers, or sadistic NCO, it's not about military cover-ups, it's a great American movie about average people serving their country.

holy1 I agree with the evaluation of bsmith5552 that it is a disappointing flagwaver, and essentially a U.S.Marine recruitment film. But it has its own place in history. I have just been refreshed as to that place in history by watching again the film version of Leon Uris's first (and maybe best) novel, Battle Cry. Uris dramatized his own experience as a young marine, first training in the States, then in Wellington and elsewhere in New Zealand and finally fighting in the islands of the Pacific He has a fascinating picture of what it was like for young Americans to find themselves in a strange and previously unheard of land like New Zealand. I was a Kiwi teenager in Wellington at that time and can vouch for the accuracy of Uris' depiction of the impact of the descent of thousands of young marines on our city and of their interaction with the locals. To the Shores of Tripoli screened in Wellington in 1942, not long after Pearl Harbor, in the time the newly formed Marine Divisions were there preparing for their involvement in the war in the South Pacific. Through that film we saw on our screens the training only months earlier of the men who were now in our midst. Bsmith5552 speaks of the repetitive sequences of close order drill. I watched the marine band perform those intricate marching exercises in colour film in a local cinema ("picture theatre" in our brand of English). This was the same week I saw them do it live in Wellington. I was transfixed as I saw utterly committed young marines rise and stand to attention in their places in the cinema as the Marines Hymn came through on the film's sound track. I was not simply present at a piece of entertainment. I was watching live drama. To the Shores of Tripoli may not have been a great movie. But in the South Pacific in 1942, when we (maybe unlike today's Iraquis) welcomed the Marines as life savers, preserving us from a Japanese invasion, it had its place in the drama of that time. I viewed it sixty years ago with great interest. I would like the little niche it has in cinema history to be remembered.

pcronin This is probably John Payne's best vehicle. He plays the rugged individualist Pvt Chris Winters, an upstart booted from Culver who enlists in the marines, not coincidentally in the unit headed by his father's old officer buddy who not also coincidentally saved his life. Funny things start happening right away. First his girlfriend who he joined to get away from's father is the CO, so she always gets letters excusing him from duty to be with her. Ugh. Next Chris falls head over heels for beautiful 2nd Lieut Mary Carter, a cold nurse who quickly melts when he will stop at nothing to get near her, immediately feigning hit by a military truck to land him in the infirmary. She teaches him a hilarious but painful lesson, yet he is still determined. Then it gets serious when they're assigned C school duty and are called to "war games" at sea which consists of going into a mine field, where Chris' Sgt Dixie Smith played by Randolph Scott gets knocked out and is in grave danger of being blown up. Chris takes a boat from the sweeper and singlehandedly rescues him, returning to a heroes welcome. He has won over Mary, but gets angry because he is so principled and it is killing his spirit. Mary says goodbye, and he goes with his girlfriend to a cushy desk job in Washington, only in the car listening to the radio he hears that the Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbor. His unit happens to be parading by on their way to war, so he leaps out and changes back from suit to uniform hiding among the ranks. That is humorous too. The final scene is the ship leaving the harbor with Mary in Chris' arms and everyone singing the Marine Hymn, "From the Halls of Montezuma!...", and you know the rest! Pick up a copy today!