Product Details

• Actors: Richard Widmark, Jack Palance, Reginald Gardiner, Robert Wagner, Karl Malden
• Directors: Lewis Milestone
• Writers: Michael Blankfort
• Producers: Robert Bassler
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Language: English, Japanese
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• VHS Release Date: January 1, 1998
• Run Time: 113 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301662962
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #150,609 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Lewis Milestone was the American cinema's premier maker of war movies for three decades. He won an Academy Award for the single most honored film about World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), and made one of the most distinctive contemporaneous films of World War II, A Walk in the Sun (1945)--a notable influence on Saving Private Ryan. Still, some of his efforts were rather less than milestones, including The Halls of Montezuma. That still leaves room to accord the picture a marginal recommendation; it's well cast, competently made, and free of "Hollywood" heroics. But the hallmarks of Milestone's style--such as his syncopated tracking shots--were becoming mannerisms, and the screenplay's rhythms of personal crises set against the bigger picture of the military campaign are pretty mechanical.

Richard Widmark stars as a Marine platoon leader who, having brought only seven of his men through Guadalcanal, is determined to see them safely through the next island conquest. The lieutenant was a schoolteacher in civilian life--as we see in flashbacks--and one member of his command is a former student (Richard Hylton) he helped overcome fear. Other platoon members include ex-boxer Jack Palance, trigger-happy bad boy Skip Homeier, hardcase veterans Neville Brand and Bert Freed, and Karl Malden as a philosophical corpsman. However, the most arresting performance is given by Milestone discovery Richard Boone, making his screen debut as a sympathetic colonel stuck with fighting the Japanese and fighting off a miserable cold at the same time. --Richard T. Jameson

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant film long before it's time., February 19, 2004

By 

"jedi-master-gandalf" (Anaheim Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Halls of Montezuma (DVD)

Halls of Montezuma is a surprisingly realistic view of war-life in the Pacific theater of World War II. The themes found in the film are close to those of Saving Private Ryan, where one's man's life is worth more than we know. Each main character's past is explored, showcasing some excellent direction by Milestone. The editing found in the origin stories is similar to that of Tom Hanks' directed episode, "Crossroads" in Band of Brothers and is a pleasant surprise.

I find that many of the "go-getter" Hollywood-isms found in the war films of that era are for the most part absent in this film, give or take a few scenes. The battles are brilliant executed and the face-to-face confrontations with the Japanese are both nerve-wrecking and frightening.

I think that Halls of Montezuma is so precious because it's grittiness and realism was a rariety among the big budget war pictures of the 1940's-60's. Films like this one and Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" are truly great war films long before their time.

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Halls of Montezuma down and dirty, August 22, 2000

By 

gobirds2 (New England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Halls of Montezuma [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is a grim and austere W.W.II film dealing realistically with Marines pulled from civilian life and thrust into the horrors of combat in the Pacific. It is strong on characters and their motivations and convictions that carry them through the rigors of war. It's lack of a big budget adds to its realism, bringing the narrative to a more intimate level, and elicits emotional responses from the viewer.

The fine cast includes Richard Widmark, Jack Palance, Robert Wagner, Karl Malden, Richard Boone, Skip Homeier, Jack Webb, Neville Brand and Martin Milner.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 1950s war movie that is ahead of its time, November 29, 2005

By 

M. Mierzwa (Davis, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Halls of Montezuma (DVD)

As a son of a US Marine I'd like to start off by recommending this film to anybody looking for possible gift ideas for a veteran. My dad and I both were pleasantly surprised by this film.


About the film
The Halls of Montezuma seemed a bit ahead of its time. The story centers around an USMC officer's growing war fatigue. A former high school teacher, Lt. Carl Anderson, is tasked with taking a small patrol into enemy territory to gather intelligence about the Japanese rocket launching base that is preventing the Marines from securing an unnamed Pacific island.

The story was slow enough that I had the change to care about the characters. However, the short action / combat sequences kept things moving along.

My first thought was that "Saving Private Ryan" had borrowed heavily from this film. Whether or not that is really the case, the two films are similar, and I would think anybody who enjoyed war films that are more focused on an individual's growing unease with a war will enjoy "Halls of Montezuma". The ending of the film simply seemed realistic, not happy, not surreal ... just realistic, and for a war film made so shortly after the Second World War this film seems ahead of its time.


About the DVD
We watched the film straight through, so I didn't have the chance to explore any of its menu features or chapter setups. The picture quality of the DVD was amazing. We were very pleased with that. However, FOX pictures included a rather long commercial at the beginning of the DVD that we considered skipping over.