Objective Burma!
| Objective, Burma! | |
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Original film poster
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| Directed by | Raoul Walsh |
| Produced by | Jerry Wald |
| Written by | Alvah Bessie (story) |
| Screenplay by |
Ranald MacDougall Lester Cole |
| Starring |
Errol Flynn James Brown |
| Narrated by | Truman Bradley |
| Music by | Franz Waxman |
| Cinematography | James Wong Howe |
| Edited by | George Amy |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
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Release date
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Running time
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142 min |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | 2,635,192 admissions (France) |
Objective, Burma! is a 1945 war film that is loosely based on the six-month raid by Merrill's Marauders in the Burma Campaign during the Second World War. Directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Errol Flynn, the film was made by Warner Bros. immediately after the raid.
A group of United States Army paratroopers led by Captain Nelson (Errol Flynn) are dropped into Burma to locate and destroy a camouflaged Japanese Army radar station that is detecting Allied aircraft flying into China. For their mission, they are assigned Gurkha guides, a Chinese Army Captain and an older war correspondent (Henry Hull) whose character is used to explain various procedures to the audience.
The mission is an overwhelming success as the 36-man team quickly take out the station and its personnel. But when the airborne troops arrive at an old airstrip to be taken back to their base, they find the Japanese waiting for them at their rendezvous site. Captain Nelson makes the hard decision to call off the rescue planes, and hike out on foot.
To reduce the likelihood of detection, the group then splits up into two smaller units to meet up at a deserted Burmese village. But when Nelson arrives at the meeting place, he finds that the other team had been captured, tortured and mutilated by the Japanese. Only Lt. Jacobs survives, and he too dies after telling Nelson what had happened. The surviving soldiers are then attacked and are forced again to retreat into the jungle. The men must then cross the swamps in their attempt to make it back to safety through enemy-occupied jungle.
Fighting an almost constant rearguard action, Nelson's paratroopers also succeed as decoys leading Japanese troops away from the site of the British 1944 aerial invasion of Burma.
Producer Ranald MacDougall had been a creator and co-writer of the CBS radio series The Man Behind the Gun that was awarded a 1942 Peabody Award. He had been contracted to Warner Brothers, with this his second film after uncredited work on Pride of the Marines.
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Wikipedia