Change Your Image
shelton_harry
Reviews
Take the High Ground! (1953)
Two Combat Veterans Lead New Recruits Through Basic Training
The staple of war movies is the Basic Training Movie, where raw recruits are transformed from peace loving civilians into competent and capable fighting men. Thorne Ryan (Richard Widmark) and subordinate LaVerne Holt (Karl Malden) have returned from combat duty in Korea to Fort Bliss, Texas where they are assigned Drill Sargent duty. Ryan loathes his seemingly thankless task of running the recruits through uniform issue, close order drill, and rifle cleaning, preferring instead to fight communists in Korea. Ryan starts his recruits off with the proclamation, "You will never make it!" Laverne seems more content in his job and is happy to be in his station. The two then proceed to train the cross section of city boys, country boys, educated boys, goof-balls, idiots and klutzes into fighting machines.
Two subplots emerge; first the meeting of Julie Mollison (Elaine Stewart), the ex-wife of a combat casualty, who it is suggested to somehow have brought about the soldier's death by her desertion of their marriage after he deployed. Ryan and Holt, nevertheless, compete for her affections. Ryan holds her with disdain at the outset, but is soon overcome by her seeming helplessness. Holt does not care to judge her at all. He accepts her as she is. Julie seems to only to like the soldier with the highest rank.
The other weaker subplot involves the rivalry between Sargents, pitting Ryan against a Master Sargent who outranks him but does not have the hallowed Infantry Badge (a symbol of combat experience). There are the requisite fights and male posturing typical in military situations. The young recruits suffer exhaustion, panic, and rage at their Drill Instructors as they master the craft of soldiering. The location of the border town of El Paso provides an interesting twist in the off duty experiences of the recruits where they somehow find the only Anglo woman in the bars of Juarez while the Mexican women populate the background shots with barely any attention at all.
One of the stars of the movie is the desert background of El Paso, Texas where location filming took place. The end of the movie is somewhat predictable and comes off as a recruiting tool for the U.S. Army, but as war buddy movies go this one has sufficient tension to keep most viewers entertained.