The sun around a walk

One of the movies that TCM seems to show fairly often when they need something for the Memorial Day or Veteran's Day programming blocks is A Walk in the Sun. I hadn't actually seen it before, so this year I made it a point to watch to be able to do a review on it here.

The action takes place in late 1943, as the Allies are about to make the jump to the European continent by invading Sicily after which they will work their way all the way up the peninsula. The story deals with one small platoon's place in that invasion. They're waiting to make the sea crossing, and it's not an easy one since the Axis powers know it's coming and have defensive weaponry ready to try to repel it. Indeed, one of the shots from the shore severely injures the head of the platoon, forcing them to select a new commander, who also gets killed fairly early on. Ultimately Staff Sgt. Tye (Dana Andrews) is going to lead the platoon.

Their objective is a bridge that crosses a river on a key road that the Axis powers have been using to transport troops, so their job is to destroy that bridge until the Allies can secure the area and replace the bridge. However, the bridge is guarded, more or less, by a farmhouse that holds the high ground in the area, and the Germans and Italians are sure to have a lot of men stationed there.

But to be honest, the mission is more of a macguffin as the movie is really about the men themselves and how they react to being in war and the stresses that produces, and how they deal with that stress. If you're looking for action, there's not all that much, although there is an assault on the farmhouse at the end. This may disappoint some viewers.

On the other hand, he have a cast of people who were all relatively early in their careers, with some going on to pretty big things (Lloyd Bridges and Dana Andrews), while others did well but achieved varying degrees of stardom (Richard Conte and John Ireland. Sterling Holloway is probably the veteran of the cast as a medic embedded with the platoon who gets killed off early.

So is A Walk in the Sun a good movie? I'd say it depends on what sort of movie you're looking for. There are those who say that war is a lot of hurry up and wait, with short bursts of action punctuating long periods of nothing much happening. If you're up for that and a movie with an ensemble cast, then I think you'll definitely like A Walk in the Sun.