What is it with you people i just don't understand.Everyone is saying Robert walker was annoying and its pure bull. He is the typical young man....excited to be in the war.....excited to kill the enemy...sensitive and funny. Walkers acting was top notch.....the scene where he breaks down after writing a letter to mum....awesome. I looked at all his expressions in the film and they were so real...so authentic. Baatan is a good movie superb cast NOLAN TAYLOR...even DesiArnaz makes me wish he had done more of this type of role.A good ending splendid visual effect.....TAY Garnett did it again. This with So PROUDLY We Hail has got to be one of the greatest war movie ever.....and i also forgot the wonderful work of Thomas Mitchell and George Murphy. Bravo

WITH THE WHOLE world (literally) at war, the early events of heroism and atrocity by the enemy Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan were natural subjects for film. Although the greatest number of movies made was in the relatively safe haven of the United States, Hollywood commendably told the story of everyman and every nation in the great conflict, we know as World War II.SO IT WAS that MGM turned its eyes toward the Philippines and the events that followed the attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor of December 7, 1941. Names such as Manila, Corregidor and Bataan became rallying cries for our forces in those dark, early days of U.S. involvement.WITH THE NEWS of the infamous and murderous forced march of Philippine and American POW's became widely known as "the Bataan Death March", it was decided to do a picture with the name of that very peninsula on the island of Luzon.BEING WARTIME OF the greatest and scariest ilk, we needn't state that movies made at this time would and should be properly classified as being "propaganda."* With literally millions of men in uniform and under arms, both they and the public at large needed instruction and reminders of what we were fighting for and why.WITH THE SELECTION of "BATAAN" as its perfectly brief and emotionally charged title, the producers only had to craft a suitable story to serve as the vehicle of entertainment/indoctrination. In doing so, MGM turned to both film history and to American History Books.THE NOTION OF a sort of 'microcosm' of mankind had been used in film successfully over the years. As an example of (then) recent and well received application of this type was done in John Ford's STAGECOACH. The story is told of how so many unrelated and widely divergent individuals, who are now suddenly thrown together in a dangerous situation. Although unrelated, unknown to each other and having little in common; they unite for a common good.THE SECOND ELEMENT is taken from the very pages of the History of the early U.S.A. It was the 1836 incident where a small number of volunteers defended a former Franciscan Mission against an overwhelmingly superior number of regular Mexican troops at San Antonio, Texas. The makeshift fort is known as The Alamo.THE GROUP OF soldiers assembled for this highly fictionalized account represented fragments of various units and nationalities, being both American and Filipino. Additionally, the personalities represented the commoner and the well off, the cultured and the crude; with a veritable rainbow of ethnicities representing every geographical section of America.ADDED TO THIS, we have a story which strongly parallels that of those who fought for Texas' independence 105 years prior. Holding out and preventing the attacking Japanese was the fanatical credo that permeated all here. All seem to know that, whatever comes, they will die, either way. The decision is made and heartily endorsed by all to fight to the end.IN A VERY Davey Crockett-like fashion, the main character (Robert Taylor) is the last to be killed.IT SHOULD COME as no surprise that, being a product of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the film assembled an outstanding cast. It was headed up by: Robert Taylor, George Murphy, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Nolan, Le Bowman, Robert Walker, Desi Arnaz, Barry Nelson, Phillip Terry, Roque Espiritu, Kenneth Spencer, Alex Havier, Tom Dugan and Donald Curtis. Outstanding battle scenes with plenty of extras, realistic uniforms & vehicles and authentic looking sets put the viewers right there, in the Philipines, 1941.

I really enjoyed this actioner, it starts off with an ear blasting bombing and the film is high on action for the rest of the movie. Other action includes more deafening explosions, shootouts and battle scenes which all make very heavy use of Gattling guns, springfield rifles and grenades.But at times there is a lot of dialogue and the film is very bleak, as with most war movies. There is a lot of quite frightening and harrowing scenes, some which include several characters dying of malaria or being killed in battle, for a 70 year old film, there is quite a lot of blood and gore. In the aftermath of a skirmish, many of the main characters are dead or wounded and one character is nearly completely covered in blood and the rest of the characters are nearly covered in their comrades or their enemys blood, very disturbing, now i know why its hardly on TV.At the end of the movie, every single character apart from Robert taylor, is dead. Taylor finds himself surrounded by enemy soldiers and in a state of frenzy begins machine gunning every soldier he can see. The film ends with a front view of the machine gun relentlessly firing out shots as a message appears on the screen. After this, the usual The End card appears.All in all, quite a brutal and hard hitting anti-war drama, but still one of the best. Highly recommended for war movie fans.

If you discount Robert Taylor, a contract artist, there's very little about this film that says MGM yet that was the studio responsible. Thomas Mitchell, aged fifty-one at the time was a tad long in the tooth even for a thirty-year man, Lloyd Nolan, who turned in arguably the best performance had strong ties to Paramount, George Murphy was a jobbing actor who followed the money, Robert Walker was just starting out and was not identified with any studio, likewise Desi Arnaz. Journeyman director Tay Garnett jobbed around though he did helm The Postman Always Rings Twice for MGM and so on. What we have here is our old-friend the Hollywood 'Bomber-Crew' movie in which a group of disparate people are thrown together due to circumstances beyond their control (in this case war) and told to just get on with it. Of it's type it's as good as any and better than some.