War on the Flip Side

None but the Brave. As producer, director and star of this World War II melodrama, Frank Sinatra is triply committed to a piece of flip moral hindsight. War is archaic, he says. It is also rough on brotherhood. But he cannot conceal his boyish enthusiasm for any activity that brings together a swell bunch of guys.

Brave begins arrestingly with a Japanese narrator, Lieut. Kuroki (Tatsuya Mihashi), who, rrring all his Is, describes the "roneriness of command" over a pocket of troops marooned on a Pacific island outpost. Soon an air battle sends a tiny C-47 transport plowing into the island's toy palms, and out of the special effects a story line emerges. Two enemy bands exist side by side, Japanese and American. Will they continue the mad annihilation? Or will they discover that they need each other to survive, and declare a truce?

The idea holds some promise, except that Director Sinatra and his scriptwriters goof away tension at every turn. A truce seems inevitable, since both camps are rent by internal strife and riddled with cliches. While Kuroki contends with a trigger-happy Buddhist, the American captain (Clint Walker) has to restrain a volatile young officer (played with unwarranted assurance by Singer Tommy Sands, Sinatra's son-in-law). The first meeting of G.I. and Jap ends with some cute business of swapping cigarettes for fish. There is a brief skirmish over a boat, but peace follows when Sinatra, as a drunken Irish medic, sobers up to treat the enemy wounded. "I'm a Band-Aid man," he quips, preparing to amputate a Japanese leg.

From then on, the only important distinction between friend and foe is that the foes appear to be better actors. Brave's foolish little war ends in a bloody climax, suddenly dumping all moral issues for the fun of a good scrap. The about-face calls for a final word from Lieut. Kuroki: "There is no death when the spirit rives." But when the spirit racks conviction, man, what good is riving?

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