Popular reviews

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★

  Make you wanna go out and buy some war bonds, good stuff.

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  Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🐝 ★★½

  Films I Watched On TV While I Was 'Working'

  A peculiar war film which was due to be headlined by Charlton Heston before the studio laughed in his face when he said he wanted a percentage of the film's takings, Darby's Rangers never really seems to know what it wants to be.

  In many ways it takes a familiar sort of route for a WWII film. It pulls together a disparate band of soldiers, bungs them into a gruelling training routine, sees them getting up to no good in their social and personal lives, and then sends them out to battle with the ensuing tragedy and heroism ensuing. Which is all fine and well with me, it's worked on lots…

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★

  feels like even in 1958 this would've been a corny, outmoded recruitment picture. not without charm but pretty toothless imo.

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  Review by johnlease ★★½

  This film has it's good points, there are a few decent combat scenes, an excellent closing shot, and a strong performance by Jack Warden. On the other hand, there are some very weak subplots regarding various romantic distractions of a garden variety of American GIs undergoing Ranger training in the UK. At one point Jack Warden says to James Garner, "Colonel, when are we going to war?" and I thought, "I was just thinking the same thing!" The long boring interludes, before and between combat, drag it down pretty badly. I was sadly disappointed, and I can't recommend it.

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  Review by Michael Brooks ★★½

  James Garner does a serviceable job in this by-the-numbers WWII flick and is aptly supported by the likes of Jack Warden, Stuart Whitman and Murray Hamilton and though this film is about the first Ranger Battalion much of the film is about the men chasing women and falling in love, well, except for Garner who is too busy being noble and gruff.

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  Review by Vinod Shankar 🍊 ★★★

  This movie has two distinct sides, and they don't mesh all that well. First, the war history which is pretty immersive and interesting, though maybe a bit shallow and overly propagandish. I guess they mixed actual war footage in there to make it even more realistic and that kinda works, even if it also feels like a cheat.

  The other side here is kinda soapy, as it focuses A LOT of time on these soldiers looking for wives while at war. These stories aren't particularly well-written but are effective enough; yet they truly do look and feel like some '50s teen-idol stuff.

  The parts are fine, I guess, but the picture as a whole is a mixed bag. Wellman apparently did this solely so the studio would fund his next movie, a dream project of his which would be his final film.

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  Review by Luka ★★½

  Wellman made some of the best (and most underappreciated) war movies in the mid-late 40's, so it's sad to see him reduced to making generic and dishonest recruitment pictures like this just 10 years later. It's competent still, just not worth watching for any reason.

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  Review by eightandahalf ★★

  If you are going to bring James Garner into a film like this you use him for his charm and sly demeanour. Instead what William Wellman delivered was a rather charmless, sentimental WWII film that belongs to that prominent subset chronicling an ill-disciplined, disparate group of soldiers who build relationships and camaraderie. The comedic approaches don't work and the second half is overly melodramatic.

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  Review by James Patrick ★★½

  This movie sags whenever James Garner and Jack Warden aren’t on screen. They’re not on-screen all that much. Garner’s first starring vehicle shows straightaway how and why he became star. He just has magnetism, charm, even when he’s spewing poorly scripted war machismo and sap. I’d go into battle for James Garner with a boiled lobster and a tin plate shield. It’s a silly picture more concerned about the dead-end love lives of the Rangers than the training. Once dispatched to WWII, the movie gets more interesting, but also conventionally dull. Some nice scenes of fog-laden battlescapes and moments of sincere pathos, but this one’s a mess that never carves out it’s own reason for existing... other than giving James Garner his start (even miscast) when Charlton Heston pulled out of the production.

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  Review by Max Kromholc ★★★

  The Scottish accents in this movie were almost as temperamental as the tone.

  It dips unfortunately into melodrama, has a lot of hammy attempts at comedy and feels like a decade late propaganda movie. Perhaps for the Korean War? But at times it’s also an anti war movie which is strange.

  But it’s well shot and the epic story of the first rangers is an interesting one despite the majority of it being fictionalised. Wellman (who at this point has churned out numerous classics including my favourite American silent film ‘wings’) keeps the story always well focused and fleshes out the characters enjoyably making them all quite unique and fun with some good development. Though it’s sad to see his…

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  Review by Melina ★★★ 1

  An extra star for James Garner's five o'clock shadow

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  Review by Brian Burkart ★★★

  Closer to a wartime comedy than a serious look at the formation of US Army's First Ranger Battalion, their training in Scotland under the guidance of British Commando's and the impact they had on World War II. In his first starring role James Garner, who was a last minute replacement when Charlton Heston demanded more money and was fired, shows some of his trademark charisma but the role is underwritten and full of cliché.