An utterly routine military film, minus anything that might distinguish it from the many other recruiting posters of the time, e.g. The DI (1957), Battle Cry (1955), et al. Except for the first few minutes of combat in Korea, the remainder is taken up with Basic Training at Fort Bliss, TX. Widmark gets the stereotypical role of an emotionally crippled drill sergeant, while Malden is wasted as his straight-arrow assistant. Third billed Stewart is the required love interest, who unfortunately is all hair and little talent. The remainder of the cast fills out the ranks of recruit trainees, with the usual array of witty or problem personalities. The movie's one notable feature turns up in the multi-racial ranks of the trainees, a relatively new updating for Hollywood.As a guy who went through Basic (at Ft. Bliss in the 60's), I have to agree with reviewer bkoganbing. Many of the incidents portrayed in the film would never have occurred in real training, especially Malden slugging Widmark in front of the trainees. But I guess the screenplay needed more action at that point. Then too, the language was really cleaned up for public viewing. I had to laugh every time Widmark benignly called the recruits "young people".What surprises me is the movie's director, Richard Brooks. How he got the job of supervising this sort of pablum is a puzzle, having built a reputation for highly serious work as a screenwriter, Brute Force (1948), Crossfire (1947), et al. Anyway, the movie is fairly typical of the sanitized type of military drama of the 1950's, before the stark realities of Vietnam sank in. (Contrast Basic Training here with it's more starkly realistic counterpart in Full Metal Jacket {1987}.) All in all, Take The High Ground is little more than a bland period curiosity.

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.

Take the High Ground! (1953) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Two years after becoming a hero in Korea, Sgt. Ryan (Richard Widmark) is back in the United States at Ft. Bliss where he must train a new group of men for battle. His partner, Sgt. Holt (Karl Malden) doesn't agree with his over aggressive manor but soon the two men have another battle, a woman (Elaine Stewart) in town. The tough-as-nails drill Sergent is a character we've seen from the early silent days to even in more recent films like AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN. I think each generation has their own films that deal with these characters and they're all ranging in terms of quality. This one here remains entertaining from start to finish even though it offers nothing new or original outside the Korean issue (and each of these films changed that depending on what war the country was in). I think what works best here are the performances by the two leads but you can't help but feel that both were somewhat letdown by the screenplay. The screenplay isn't really bad but at the same time it doesn't try to do anything new with the material. We get the typical love-hate relationship between Widmark and Malden, we get the typical "bad girl" they fall for and even the new recruits are the same type we've seen as far back as Lon Chaney's TELL IT TO THE MARINES. To be fair, you can look at this film and certain points seemed to have inspired AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN as well as Kubrick's FULL METAL JACKET but those two films took the basic training concept and did a bit more in terms of story and drama. What really caught me off guard was the direction by Brooks because at times it was rather hard to tell if he was going for comedy or drama. I think this was meant to be a drama as Widmark is constantly overbearing on the men but there's really no soul to anything we're seeing. We see Widmark being way too hard on the guys but for a reason. We see Widmark unhappy with the girl but for a reason. We see all of this stuff, are told the reason for it yet we never really feel it. Widmark turns in a nice performance but I certainly wouldn't rank it among his best. Malden plays the supporting part like no one else in the history of film could. Stewart isn't overly memorable but she's at least easy to look at. Clocking in at 101-minutes, we get pretty much everything you'd expect from a movie like this but one can't help but feel it should have been better.

The 1957 Jack Webb classic, "The D.I." bears a close relationship to "Take the High Ground," from its general theme to the presence of an inept recruit, to the main character's romance with a young woman who lives close to the base.In the Jack Webb (Marine) version, Gunnery Sergeant Jim Moore (Webb) takes on a platoon with the usual selection of raw recruits, but one who is particularly troublesome. In the Richard Widmark (Army) version, the same thing happens, with a troublesome and troubled recruit. In both versions, the recruit makes an attempt to go over the wall, and in both versions, the tough but compassionate training sergeant stops the escape and molds the recruit into shape.In both versions, the love interest is a woman who has been emotionally scarred by a former romance with a serviceman who had been killed in combat.In both versions, there is a fellow training sergeant that frustrates and annoys the main character into a showdown fistfight.At the end of both movies, the cast is reprised, with their names. The only difference is that in the MGM version (Take the High Ground), the entire platoon are actors. In the Mark VII version (The D.I.), the platoon was played by real Marines. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~' For those unfamiliar with military lingo, "boot camp" is generally used to refer to Navy recruit training (or Marine training), whereas the Army uses the term "Basic Training." In a similar vein, the Navy refers to combat simulation encampments as "maneuvers," whereas the Army uses the term "bivouac."Both movies are excellent films.