Review: Sands of Iwo Jima (1949)

Sands of Iwo Jima (1949)

Approved by the Production Code Administration of the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America

Score: 4 out of 5

In the canon of Movies That You Watch With Your Dad, Sands of Iwo Jima is one of the big ones, referenced as such by everything from King of the Hill to NCIS. That's how I wound up watching it, the first John Wayne movie I've reviewed (though not the first one I've seen; I watched Rio Bravo a long time ago). Last weekend, I went over to my father and his girlfriend's house for lunch, hooked up his old combination VCR/DVD player to their television so they could watch his old movies (it needed an RCA-to-HDMI adapter), used his VHS tape of this film (the colorized version from the '80s, specifically) to see if it worked, and ultimately sat down and watched it with them. It's enjoyed this reputation for a very long time, too, as many of the fathers who shared this movie with their sons first saw it themselves with their own fathers, who were probably around when it first premiered 75 years ago and may have seen it in theaters with their own fathers. And given the themes of this movie, revolving as they do around an authority figure whose stern discipline of the men under his command is ultimately vindicated, I can definitely see the appeal this movie has for dads, even those who aren't veterans, though its unvarnished love for the United States military (the Marine Corps especially) has also undoubtedly boosted its reputation there. What's more, while it's very much a movie of its time, it's also a very well-made war movie with two standout battle sequences and a lot of interesting character moments in between that help set up the drama in those battles, anchored by a great performance by the legendary Wayne in the kind of role that defined his image and got him his first Oscar nomination. It's still a classic, and one I can see enduring for another 75 years among both fathers and the US military.

John Wayne is Marine Sergeant John Stryker, a man with a name out of an action movie, video game, or comic book from the '80s or '90s and a backstory to match (or at least about as much as one could get away with under the Hays Code). He's a harsh commander of the squad he leads, and also a man with personal demons, an alcoholic whose wife left him and took their son and who seems to be taking out some of his issues on his men. Needless to say, his fellow Marines hate him and see him as a tyrant of a squad leader, feelings that Stryker reciprocates as he comes to see the Marines he's in charge of as a green, undisciplined rabble fresh out of boot camp who are dangerously unprepared for battle. It's not much of a surprise to say that, when these Marines face their first actual combat in the Battle of Tarawa, they very quickly realize that Stryker wasn't just a cruel, heartless bastard, but was actually trying to prepare them for the harsh reality of warfare. At Tarawa, the battle-hardened Stryker comes off as the only man in the squad who was actually ready for combat, while the men under his command make constant errors in judgment that get some of them killed or badly wounded, forcing them to shape up after the battle while on leave in Honolulu before they're shipped back into the meat grinder of the Pacific War, specifically to the famed battle in the title.

For all his public image and reputation as the paragon of mid-century rugged, stoic, conservative masculinity, from both fans of his who celebrate that image and people who are deeply critical of what it stood for then and now (and a reputation that he himself cultivated in his lifetime), Wayne's actual performances had depths beyond that, and this film, despite playing a key role in building that image, was no exception. He may not have had the most range, but he knew where his limits and strengths were as an actor, which allowed him to make the most of his image and occasionally play around with it. Here, Stryker comes across as a man who, the more we learn about him, seems like he threw himself into soldiering as a way out of a broken personal life, coming to see the men he commands on the battlefield as his surrogate family after his wife left him. He is ultimately the good guy trying to do right by his fellow Marines, as evidenced at Tarawa when they have to learn the lessons he tried to teach them the hard way, but he is a flawed leader who, before Tarawa, did little to earn the respect of those men, his alcoholism in particular having gotten him demoted recently and causing him to wind up blackout drunk while on leave in New Zealand, an affair that causes his men to see him as a hypocrite. In this, the comparisons between Stryker as a "father to his men" and a literal dad, especially the idealized patriarchs of the postwar era, become unavoidable. Stryker may know best, but he has to soften up and come to terms with some of his own vulnerabilities if he wants to earn the trust of his men, and not risk another situation like the one at Tarawa where he saw that everything he tried to teach them went in one ear and out the other. He's a hardass with a heart of gold, a more idealized version of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket whose "tough love" approach does in fact make his men into better Marines in the end but could probably stand to tone it down a bit, if for no other reason than to more effectively teach his men.

As an action film, it's clearly a movie of its time. A ton of unironic postwar 'Merica drips from nearly every frame, which can feel hokey watching it today but is still admittedly enjoyable in its own way, with me being of the opinion that the best propaganda is the kind that is proud and unashamed of the things it is standing for. A message delivered with conviction, as this film does, is a lot more persuasive than that same message delivered halfheartedly. Something that feels a bit more dated nowadays, though, comes in the effects department with the use of archival World War II footage for the battle scenes, a decision that on one hand guaranteed realism but on the other also let you know that Republic Pictures, even on one of its bigger-budget productions, had its roots in a collection of smaller indie studios that are often referred to by the self-explanatory name of "Poverty Row". That said, while the real-life war footage wasn't quite seamlessly woven into the film, it did fit remarkably well, and the action they did shoot for this was very well-done. Tarawa felt like a mess of a battle where the fresh recruits were constantly screwing up and had to be bailed out by an increasingly frustrated Stryker, Iwo Jima by contrast made them feel like a well-oiled machine who had learned how to function as both a unit and as individual Marines, and both scenes did a great job of establishing the lay of the land for the battles and the Japanese soldiers as a credible threat to the Marines.

The supporting cast were all outshined by Wayne, obviously, but they too made for a likable or at least interesting bunch, a group of men who all bring their own baggage to the table and have to overcome it if they want to become better Marines, my favorites probably being John Agar as the arrogant rich kid Pete Conway and Forrest Tucker as the tough guy Al Thomas who has old beef with Stryker. The biggest weakness was probably the romantic subplot with Conway meeting and marrying a woman named Allison in New Zealand. It felt like an afterthought, there simply to put a romantic image on the poster and broaden the film's audience, between the fact that Adele Mara didn't even bother with the accent and the manner in which she almost completely vanishes from the film after that scene. Given Stryker's own history with his wife, some more development there could've helped to flesh out both Conway and Stryker as characters, giving Conway something to fight for and reason to shape up while Stryker hopes that Conway doesn't make the same mistakes in his relationship that he did with his own. Instead, not only do we barely see Allison again, the subject of Conway now being a married man is only rarely broached after the Marines ship out from New Zealand.

The Bottom Line

While it's undoubtedly a movie of its time, Sands of Iwo Jima is otherwise a rock-solid war movie anchored by a Hollywood legend in his prime delivering one of his most iconic performances. It's worth checking out whether you're into history, the military, or action movies, if for nothing else than to see an exemplar of the kind of movie that generations of later American war films would find themselves responding to.