Wake Island (1942)

The Paramount release Wake Island was showing in U.S. theaters in August of 1942, it is about a battle that happened in December of the previous year. One of those early War pieces of Hollywood propaganda that was rushed into production, you can almost see the seems in the thing, its slap dash but was meant to fulfill the role not only of cashing in on the war, but of energizing public support for it. While there is not a lot of depth to the portraits we see on screen, the characters are more types then real people, we like them and they are martyred before our eyes. While hundreds survived the battle no one survives the film, which is an interesting decision because of it what it says about how the war was framed for the public, it needed to be worth dying for. Most of the performances here are bland, but Robert Preston and William Bendix have a workable buddy comedy thing going on. **