Take the High Ground! war movie

Take the High Ground! (1953, United States)

Categories: infantry movies military base movies

Take the High Ground!

Director: Richard Brooks

Czas: 100 minut

Laguages: English

war movies infoAdam 'Frey' Barczynski
2024-04-07 / 1970-01-01

Two drill sergeants take over group of new recruits, but they have completely different views on how to turn them into fighting unit within 16 weeks.

May 1953, the Korean War is almost over, new group of recruits arrive to Army base at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. Two drill sergeants are assigned to take them over - Sgt. Laverne Holt and Sgt. Thorne Ryan. During next 16 weeks they have to turn the civilians into soldiers prepared to join the fights almost straight after finishing the training. But the two sergeants have completely different approaches to the task - while Holt is more distanced and tries to get to the recruits in calm way, Ryan prefers the "old school", which means being as tough and uncompromising as he can be. He believes that only this approach can turn them into a fighting unit. But during the training Ryan becomes more and more detached from his people (one of them even thinks about killing him), but also from his friend Holt. Everythign gets even more complicated when a woman gets involved.

One of the war movies made in cooperation with the army, which added the realism to the whole story, but as usual created the mixture of the story itself and mindless propaganda. In many ways Take the High Ground! is similiar to such titles as Away All Boats, The Caine Mutiny, The Way Ahead and few more - it concentrated on philosophy behind the training of recruits in United States and the burden every officer is carrying - the responsibility for his men. This time the drill sergeants are shown with difficult task of turning completely green recruits in soldiers that would be able to survive in the battlefield.

Authentic army base was used for filming, elements of real training were incorporated into the script, but overall (even despite usually great performances from Malden and Widmark) the film is rather dry and easy to forget.

Our rating

4.8

Film value

5 / 10

Realism factor

4 / 5

Adventure factor

2 / 5

Historical accuracy

1 / 5

2024-04-07