Never So Few (1959)

Fantastic!

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

There are three well done battle scenes in this movie. The scenery is fabulous. Gina Lollobrigida is gorgeous. All the secondary characters are well acted, including Dean Jones, Charles Bronson and Steve McQueen.The bad news is that the script and lead actors (Sinatra and Lollobrigida) are terrible. The movie mixes an absurd and unbelievable romance with a series of clichéd and unbelievable war situations.This may not be Sinatra's worst acting job, but of the ten or so movies I've seen him in, he has never been so wooden and dull. It seems as if he walked onto the set, did his lines in one take and went out to the nightclubs.Sinatra fans will probably enjoy the movie. Everybody else, not so much.

Frank Sinatra does his best Errol Flynn imitation in director John Sturges' "Never So Few," an uneven blend of romance and combat set against the exotic backdrop of the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II. Sinatra sports a goatee and wears his campaign hat with one side of the brim pinned back Australian style. Twenty minutes he shaves the goatee off and hangs onto the hat. When Sturges and scenarist Millard Kaufmann, who collaborated on "Bad Day at Black Rock," aren't shoe-horning into the narrative an unconvincing and superfluous romance between Italian beauty Gina Lollobrigida and Sinatra, they tackle the racial intolerance. The callous U.S. Army authorities display intolerance toward the Kachin resistance warriors, even some of Sinatra's own men in his unit show their prejudice. The Air Force keeps dropping medical supplies in without enough chutes so the morphine supplies shatter on impact, and the Allied hospitals feed these tribes people food calculated to cause dysentery rather than stimulate their healing."Never So Few" is unquestionably too ambitious for its own good. Sturges and Kaufmann have our war-weary protagonist, Captain Tom Reynolds (Frank Sinatra of "From Here to Eternity"), perform a mercy killing on one of his Kachin infantrymen despite his colleagues' protests. You see, Reynolds' outfit lacks adequate medical supplies to prevent the fatally wounded soldier's needless suffering. When Reynolds proposes to put the Kachin out of his misery, second-in-command Captain Danny De Mortimer (Richard Johnson of "Deadlier Than the Male") objects. "You can't kill a man without murdering a part of yourself." Reynolds dismisses Danny's objection because he has killed a dozen men already in their last battle with the Japanese. As you can see from the outset, "Never So Few" doesn't want to be considered another exercise in hollow wartime heroics.Reynolds and Danny fly back to base and Colonel Parkson (Robert Bray of TV's "Lassie") has a jeep and driver, Corporal Ringa (Steve McQueen of "The Great St. Louis Robbery'), placed at their disposal. During an interlude in a nightclub, Reynolds decks Danny to prove Danny's claim that not even a blow can knock the monocle out of his eye. As both Reynolds and Danny sprawl onto the floor, Carla Vesari (bosomy Gina Lollobrigida of "Solomon and Sheba") enters the nightclub with her wealthy boyfriend Nikko Reggas (Paul Henreid of "Casablanca") and notice the two soldiers on the floor. Talk about an introduction! Carla and Reynolds wind up dancing arm-in-arm briefly and she decides that Reynolds isn't her type. Inevitably, these two diametrically opposite persons are attracted to each other. Reynolds has a difficult time convincing Carla to reciprocate his sentiments. She is attached to Reggas who provides for her every wish and comfort. Meanwhile, Corporal Ringa raises a little of his own hell. He decks two military policemen about the time that Reynolds and Danny are leaving the nightclub. Reynolds decides that Ringa must join his outfit and he convinces Colonel Parkson to reassign him.Furthermore, Reynolds demands that Parkson assign a doctor to his unit. Reynolds has been acting as the chief surgeon. Parkson orders Reynolds and Danny to take two weeks off. Initially, Reynolds objects, but they wind up spending time with Reggas and Carla. Danny comes down with cerebral malaria and the Army doctor, Captain Grey Travis (Peter Lawford) shows up. Reynolds has Travis assigned to his unit. Danny recovers and they return to the jungle to fight the Japanese. Reynolds is ninety-nine per cent sure that Carla has deep sixed him.As it turns out, Reggas is working for Military Intelligence. It doesn't help matters that the Henreid character vanishes without any notice. Later, after a big battle scene, when they destroy an enemy airfield, Captain Reynolds and his men cross over into China and wipe out the renegade Chinese mercenaries authorized by the Chungking government to kill all invaders both foreign and domestic, including American servicemen. Reynolds has a showdown with the brass over this incident. They want to court-martial him, but he presents evidence of Chinese treachery.If this plot summary doesn't whet your appetite, you should know that future superstars Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson flesh out of the cast. "New So Few" ranked as McQueen's first major movie, while Bronson turns in another solid supporting performance as Lieutenant Danforth, a Navajo Indian radio translator, long before John Woo made "Windtalkers" about the Navajo contribution to World War II. The cast is padded with lots of familiar Hollywood actors, including Robert Bray, John Hoyt, Dean Jones, George Takei, Mako, James Hong, Brian Donlevy, and Whit Bissell.Basically, the action alternates between the jungle and behind Allied lines as our heroes take the time to chill out, get drunk, fight, and upset their superiors. The same can be said about the production. Some scenes were lensed on location while others take place on an MGM soundstage. "Never So Few" is one of Sinatra's early forays into an all-action white-knuckler and ole blue eyes wields a .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun and a British Sten gun. McQueen survives the fray, but Bronson bites the bullet. Sturges and Kaufmann depict World War II as "an unprecedented war. Sturges stages the battle scenes with his usual aplomb and the widescreen Panavision lens of cinematographer William H. Daniels, who lensed "Brute Force" and "The Naked City," add to the spectacle.Essentially, "Never So Few" opens with a controversial bang when Sinatra ices one of his own troops and ends with a bang when the Allies reprimand the Nationalist Chinese for letting their warlords indiscriminately murder American G.I.s! "Never So Few" qualifies one of those rare movies about the warfare in Asia with "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and "Objective, Burma" as the other two major films. Incidentally, a modicum of the action is based loosely on a true story.

This is a most unheralded Hollywood vehicle and yet it contain enough heavy weight stars to garner an entire shelf at the Academy Awards. The movie deals with that portion of World War II in and around what was then called Burma. (Today the world calls it Myanmar) Nevertheless, the small native Kachin tribe have been called upon to engage the Japanese army. Along with American forces they are a small, but formidable contingent who despite their numbers, become the banner of the film. "Never So Few" is the story of the Kachin and the American commander Capt. Tom Reynolds (Frank Sinatra) and his able assistant Capt. Danny Mortimer. Combating the superb Japanese forces and their attempts to conquer Indochina, creates many losses among the allies and prompts a need for a medical officer. Capt Grey Travis (Peter Lawford) joins their group as does a spirited Hell's Kitchen warrior, named William Ringer (Steve McQueen). Betrayed by the Chineese Government after they massacre American forces, Reynolds defies his own government, kills captured prisoners and invited a court-martial. During this same period he falls for beautiful Gina Lollobrigida who plays Carla Vesari a protégé of Nikko Regas (Paul Henreid) a rich entrepreneur. Brian Donlevy as Gen. Sloan orders Reynolds to come to headquarters to explain his defiance of orders. Dean Jones is Sgt. Jim Norby and Charles Bronson as Sgt. John Danforth along with Philip Ahn (Kung Fu) as Nautaung are superior in this movie. Each adds excellence to their respective characters, creating the cornerstone of a true Classic. Well done! ****

I don't understand how a great director (The Great Escape), a great plot (OSS training the Kachin natives), and a great cast which included Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Brian Donlevy etc. could combine to create such a horrible movie. What a waste of talent.Within the first 45 minutes of this movie, my wife gave up, and I only lasted for an hour and a half because the whole thing was so implausible.You have Frank Sinatra looking very dapper with his starched uniform and coat complete with manicured goatee in the middle of the steaming jungle, albeit a very clean looking jungle like a Hollywood back set, personally annihilating hundreds of Japanese with his 30 shot Thompson.This "remote" jungle, where air supplies must be dropped in (3 boxes for 100 odd troops) is somehow able to support a twin-Beech airlift to bring 'ol blue eyes back to an extremely lavish hotel/city where he woos the sultry Gina Lollobrigida, who dresses like someone from the Italian Riveira circa 1959. All this during the period when Japanese are overrunning most of SE Asia.Bottom line is that this movie takes a theater of war previously portrayed in such classics as "Bridge on the River Kwai" and "Operation Burma", and makes it downright silly.