Brigadier General Frank D. Merrill leads the 3,000 American volunteers of his 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), aka "Merrill's Marauders", behind Japanese lines across Burma to Myitkyina, pushing beyond their limits and fighting pitched battles at every strong-point.
Battle for Burma.
Merrill’s Marauders is directed by Samuel Fuller, who also co-adapts the screenplay with Milton Sperling from the book, The Marauders, written by Charlton Ogburn Jr. It stars Jeff Chandler, Ty Hardin, Andrew Duggan, Claude Akins, Peter brown, Will Hutchins and John Hoyt. A Cinemascope/Technicolor production with music by Howard Jackson and cinematography by William H. Clothier.
Cracker-jack war movie, packed to the rafters with blood, sweat and tears, and best of all, gritty realism. Story is about the warfare unit led by Frank Merrill (Chandler) during the Burmese campaign in 1944. Their mission was to destroy Japanese bases to avert the Japanese from making their way into India and onto a rendezvous with Hitler’s forces. Their efforts was a success but it came at great cost of lives.
Fuller, an ex-soldier himself, isn’t interested in glorifying war for entertainment purpose, he wants to keep the focus on the men and what the mission does to them, both physically and mentally. The mission was only meant to be a short sharp shocker, but they keep getting “requested” to push on further beyond what was originally required, pushed to their limits by their leader who asked they follow his lead.
In turn the men suffer through lack of food whilst some of them fall to typhus and malaria, inhospitable conditions take their toll, like trekking through miles and miles of swampy terrain, and of course they encounter the enemy on several nerve shredding occasions.
As comrades fall and heart breaking letters are written to families, Fuller peppers the picture with haunting moments. A sweep of the aftermath of a battle finds dead bodies from both sides strewn about the place, the surviving Marauders too exhausted to lift themselves off the soil. A soldier breaking down crying, another willing to carry his donkey’s load so it want be shot for holding up the trek and on it goes, a whole ream of memorable instances designed to give us some idea of what the war is hell statement actually means.
Filmed on location in the Philippines, it seems a little weird to say that the photography is beautiful given that so much emotional hardship and misery is being portrayed, but Clothier really brings everything to life with his superb use of colour, the great lensman the ideal fit for Fuller’s keen eye for lingering details.
Performances are across the board on the good side of good, with Chandler - in what sadly would be his last film before his premature death aged 42 – turning in his best ever work. He puts his all into portraying Merrill, giving him great personality whilst hitting the mark for the various emotional beats required for a leader of men. A leader who himself carries a secret that he doesn’t want his men to know about.
Stock footage usage from another movie and musical lifts from two more, hint at the economical restraints on the production, but neither affects the all round quality of the picture. Free of cliché’s or extraneous pap, this is one excellent – exciting - haunting war movie. 9/10
