[.ca] Pork Chop Hill (Widescreen/Full Screen) (ISBN 0792841662)

From Amazon.com:
This gritty, grim Korean war drama presents the grueling ordeal of a platoon charged with taking a hill of no military value during the final days of the war. While diplomats and generals argue over peace negotiations (in an appropriately wordless montage under the opening credits), tough but compassionate Lt. Joe Clemons (Gregory Peck) leads a unit of 135 men up a well-guarded hill while miscommunication--and at times no communication--cuts them off from reinforcements and regimental command. Shot against a bleak, battle-scarred mountain of white dust honeycombed with black trenches, director Lewis Milestone presents the devastating battle as a meaningless sacrifice of hundreds of lives spent in a political game of chicken. Peck leads a terrific cast of young talents and character actors, many of them just starting their respective careers: Rip Torn, Harry Guardino, Martin Landau, Norman Fell, George Peppard, Gavin MacLeod, Bert Remsen, Harry Dean Stanton, plus veteran stalwarts Woody Strode, James Edwards, Robert Blake, and Bob Steele. Milestone had previously directed the pacifist WWI classic All Quiet on the Western Front and the compassionate WWII platoon drama A Walk in the Sun. Pork Chop Hill adds one more antiwar classic to his résumé, the angry power of his drama overcoming the hollow patriotic voice-over (reportedly added by Peck) that concludes the drama. --Sean Axmaker

Great War Film:
Pork Chop Hill is a woefully undervalued war film, superior to some of its more heralded genre partners. The reason is that Pork Chop Hill presents a somewhat complex string of events, stretching from the battlefield to the negotiating table. It pulls this combination off flawlessly, and also delivers a poignant message concerning wars, and the men who fight them. Pork Chop Hill is the story of a company of American GI's in the Korean War, commanded by Lt. Clemens, portrayed magnificently by a stoic and brave Gregory Peck. They are ordered to advance on a heavily defended Chinese hill, a geographical point of little consequence. Told the hill is lightly defended, Peck advances with confidence, but it quickly becomes clear that this is far from the mop up operation promised by his superiors. He takes heavy casualties, and is drawn into a fierce battle against overwhelming Chinese forces. Meanwhile, his communication to the rear is cut, and Peck is forced to make some tough decisions on his own. Shockingly, the commanders fail to understand the facts on the ground, and continue to make woefully ill informed decisions, in order to save face. Their inaction causes numerous deaths, and Peck is stuck in a battle he cannot win. The film also shows the high command, who care little about a minor battle and the men involved. Peck is absolutely wonderful as the solid battlefield commander who will do anything for his men. When his troops falter, he is there to steel them. One of the most effective scenes in the film is when Peck is confronted by a soldier who has deserted his position and questions the worth of the ground they are on. Peck tells him the age-old battle axiom, that the lands worth is measured by the amount of blood spilled, and that you fight for your friends, nothing else. A unique point in Pork Chip Hill is the emphasis on the Chinese propaganda system, which must have been devastating, as it effects the viewer, and must have been even worse on the actual soldiers involved. It is just a great battlefield film in so many ways, a must see for fans of cinema and especially for Gregory Peck admirers.

excellent and accurate:
Based on the actual happening and with excellent acting this is more than just a war movie it's a documentary. Most of the actual names were kept and the technical advisor was the actual company commander. As an ex-infantryman in Korea in '53 I was moved. I'd rate this on a par with Band of Brothers.

Unforgettable!:
This is a movie for people with brains....tough, gritty, makes one feel they are in the trenches with the soldiers...Peck underplays his role which makes the whole cast stand out as individuals...battle-scarred backgrounds and very human interaction....has scenes that stick in your head..one of the best!

Peck Preps for Navarone:
I am a huge Peck fan. Here Gregory Peck matures into his battlefield role. Pork Chop Hill has plenty of conventional action, but lacks context and depth, symptomatic of the fact that the film was made just a very few years after the Korean War. For those who lived through the period circa late 50's, Pork Chop provides a very in-your-face, black and white look at the lives of soldiers in battle. Immediately we are plunged into the battlefield with very little in the way of location establish, preamble, character development, or historical context. They didn't use the word Communist even once. We just go there and fight an uphill battle against the Red Chinese, period. The movie has a very narrow focus, narrow in time and narrow in location, that of the taking of the hill, and the very, very short scene at the negotiating table just scratched the surface of what could have been milked out of that confrontation. An occasional cutaway to the commanding officers (would have liked to have seen more of Barry Atwater, Mr. Cool Cranium) provides only brief relief from the main task of taking and holding the hill. The Leonard Rosenmann music score is used sparingly and in a utilitarian fashion. I enjoyed the supporting cast, including Norman Fell, Martin Landau, George Peppard, and Harry Guardino. Other than that there were no surprises or unexpected plot twists. Blood and guts were kept to a relative minimum -- no use of squibs. For it's time, I'm sure it was a groundbreaking film, they even use the word DAMN a couple of times. This is straightforward storytelling that tells the story of incredibly brave men, but rather low in shock or artistic value by today's standards. They soft-pedaled the "what are we fighting for" message -- they could have hit a lot harder with that one, but seeing as this was an Army-approved production, the conclusions and emotions one draws from this film seem rather watered down.

Gregory Peck orders a bayonet charge:
In the spring of 1953, a company of the U.S. Army was ordered to assault an otherwise unprepossessing lump of Korean real estate called Pork Chop Hill. It's only value to either side was as a chess piece in the peace talks at Panmunjon, which were stalled on the question of where to pencil-in the cease-fire line. The Americans had occupied it; the Red Chinese had overwhelmed it; and now Gregory Peck (as Lt. Joe Clemons) is ordered to take his 135-man company and re-take it. PORK CHOP HILL is ostensibly based on the actual battle, and a qualifier at the beginning even states that most of the names haven't been changed. As the battle unfolded, I began to mentally compare the production with recent, outstanding, "last stand" epics, specifically WE WERE SOLDIERS and BLACK HAWK DOWN - both also based on true events. PORK CHOP HILL comes up short, but not by much. The obvious difference is that PCH - released in 1959 - is filmed in black and white. This mutes the gore, which, in any case, is positively negligible compared to the grisly and graphic realism of today's simulated combat footage. However, the resulting tension felt by the viewer as Joe's unit is surrounded and faced with impending annihilation is only a click less than that felt during the height of the WWS and BHD on-screen fighting. At one point, Clemons orders a bayonet charge, which, as he says, may be the last one ever carried out by the U.S. Army. Well, the last perhaps until Mel Gibson's character, Lt. Col. Harold Moore, orders his Air Cav troopers to do the same to get out of a tight spot in WE WERE SOLDIERS. PORK CHOP HILL is anti-war to the extent that it condemns the rear echelon desk jockeys tempted to sacrifice American boys on the altar of political expediency, or just from pure incompetence. It also isn't afraid to show the demoralization within Joe's command, and that not every grunt was itching to go over the top and charge the enemy trenches. In a film made well before the Vietnam debacle, such candidness must have been some sort of cinematic milestone for U.S. audiences used to the gung-ho dramas based on the nation's relatively recent World War II victories. My sole motivation in watching this film was to see Peck. I can't think of any actor today whose on-screen presence exudes such dignified strength and integrity. I'm so convinced of this fact that I've gone ahead and ordered a biography of the man. We are missing the likes of him (and icons Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, and Cary Grant).