The Glory Brigade delivers everything a war movie buff wants—and then delivers more. The 1953 Korean War film (out on DVD) sticks to the experience of men in combat i.e. no tacked on Hollywood romance angles, no anxious wives back home. Also, the sentimental meaning-of-life-while-facing-death conversations beloved by too many screenwriters are entirely omitted. The guys in this outfit are too busy ducking enemy bullets and trying to figure out how to survive.
And yet, The Glory Brigade goes deeper than the action by exploring the psychology of mistrust and cultural misunderstanding. Victor Mature stars as Lieut. Sam Pryor, a Greek American who resents the snickers of his WASP fellow officers over a joint UN mission with a Greek infantry company. It’s a happy reunion between Pryor and the homeboys—until he and his men begin to suspect the Greeks of shirking and slacking. Those damn foreigners expect the Americans to do all the fighting and dying, right? And as a result, Pryor’s ethnic pride turns to shame; he berates the Greeks and performs dangerous duty as if to show his men that Greek heritage is no obstacle to bravery.
But of course, he’s got it all wrong. The Greeks are more than capable of pulling their weight in battle and the UN mission in Korea really is an allied effort, despite all misunderstandings over who gives the orders.
The realism is striking in many scenes, especially the tense expectation of encountering an enemy unseen, the splatter of debris falling across the battlefield, the frontline lapses of formality (the G.I.s call Pryor “Sam”) and the frustration of blowing up bridges only to rebuild them again. The cultural aspect of the Greek unit is well developed; one man plays a wooden flute while his comrades do a circle dance; and before the men depart for battle, an Eastern Orthodox priest conducts a ceremony for the fertility of the earth and peace as well as victory in the struggle ahead.
