Objective Burma!

A classic Hollywood platoon movie (from a story by Alvah Bessie), with Flynn and his men parachuting into Burma to wipe out a key Japanese radio station. The taut action, sparse dialogue, and faultless technique keep things moving so fast that there's no time to reflect upon the morality of war or the miraculous way in which Flynn and his men survive against such overwhelming odds. Very much in the time-honoured 'war is hell' tradition, with plenty of gritty detail but the implicit suggestion that those who survive such carnage are somehow ennobled by it. Prickly reading of the film as suggesting that Errol Flynn and the Americans won the Burma Campaign single-handed provoked a massive outburst of popular and critical vilification when the film was first released in this country, and following a full-scale diplomatic incident the distributor kept it under wraps until 1952.