The Glory Brigade

Moviecut—The Glory Brigade

This is a pretty average small-scale war-movie, in which a platoon of American soldiers show themselves to be tougher, braver and cleverer than the Greek soldiers they have to join forces with. It's standard stuff all round, Victor Mature agonises, his colleagues wisecrack and the Greeks redeem themselves by the end. I waited thirty years to see this film because Lee Marvin was given third billing. But all he does in the film is sit at a radio, wearing glasses, with the occasional bit of insubstantial dialogue. In fact he should have got tenth or eleventh billing, but one assumes that, following his success in "The Big Heat", the publicity boys decided to 'use' his name. I felt cheated, which probably accounts for my not liking the film a bit more.

Victor Mature plays Lt Sam Pryor an American officer of Greek descent who is given the task of leading a platoon of Greek soldiers during the Korean war This had the potential to be a fairly good war film dealing with profound subjects like cowardice , ethnicity and identity . Unfortunately somewhere along the line something went wrong but I`m not entirely sure what . I guess all the ingrediants are there for a deeply scathing anti- war film but since THE GLORY BRIGADE has a fairly short running time it`s probably been produced by the studio as a B movie to be put on before the main feature which is a pity since it had a lot of potential , but I guess it deserves some credit for pointing out that the Americans didn`t fight the Korean war single handed

Aside from this being a war film about the Korean War (there are surprisingly few of these), there isn't a lot to distinguish this movie. It's basically a time-passer and not much more. The story is about a cooperative effort between some American and Greek troops during the war. Yes, while the US was heavily involved, quite a few other nations sent troops to fight under the authority of the United Nations. At first, the American lieutenant (VIctor Mature) and his men have their doubts about the Greeks but (not surprisingly) by the end of the film they have developed a respect for their allies. If all this sounds a bit familiar, of course it is. Quite a few other films have focused on American soldiers being forced to work with allied forces (such as in "The Devil's Brigade"). And, there really are few surprises or unusual twists to make this anything other than a time-passer.