The movie shows John Wayne take a group of less than perfect recruits and turn them into real Marines. John Wayne plays Sgt. John Stryker. He seems very angry. He takes most of his anger out on the men that he trains. He is training the men a training camp in New Zealand. He is so mean because his wife left him and took his son. A guy named Pete is in the group of recruits. John knew Pete’s dad well and respected him, however Pete told Stryker that he did not like his dad. He also shares that he doesn’t like Stryker for trying to be like his father. The recruits get time off from their training and go dancing. Pete meets a women and that is where the relationship part of the movie comes in. The women’s name is Allison and they decide to get married.
Only a short while after getting married the group of recruits head to fight in a place that has a lot of Japanese people there. Stryker tells people to run across a field. The two people that do it get shot and Stryker decides to do it himself. The men getting shot don’t really look realistic, but they probably didn’t have very good technology. They movie goes on and Pete finds out he now has a son. The movie goes on and the train until they finally get told to go to Iwo Jima. A lot of people died at the battle and Pete was very scared. John tells people to go and put the American Flag up on the mountain. The people that did this actually survived at Iwo Jima in real life. Pete is talking to John at the end and John ends up getting shot out of nowhere. The movie ends with the trainees reading a letter that John was going to send to his son.
This was my first time watching an old movie in black and white and I liked it. I thought that the battle scenes were pretty good for being made such a long time ago. I would have preferred that the group would have fought more instead of all having it be so much about love. I also liked how the movie had actual Iwo Jima survivors in the movie. I also liked how it had real battle footage. I didn’t really like how it ended though.
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