From Here to Eternity

This 1953 Best Picture winner, which also earned Frank Sinatra a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as well as six other Oscars, is the template for Michael Bay’s 2001 movie Pearl Harbor, which won none. The title comes from a Rudyard Kipling poem about soldiers “damned from here to eternity.” But the dramatic title doesn’t fix the main problem, which is that just like Bay’s movie, this is a dull melodrama that’s briefly elevated by historical events crashing in during the final minutes.

It follows three soldiers on a Hawaiian base in 1941. First is Montgomery Clift’s unfortunately named Robert E. Lee Prewitt, who transfers from the Bugle Corps to the Rifle outfit because someone else was made first bugler over him. This guy will not shut up about the bugle. In addition to being the World’s Best Bugler, he’s also the World’s Best Boxer, constantly pressured to fight by his superiors. He befriends Sinatra’s Maggio, a tiny, sassy Italian stereotype.

Next is Captain Holmes and his miserable wife Karen played by Deborah Kerr. He’s obsessed with boxing, and she’s sick of his cheating. She has a reputation for sleeping around, which the soldiers on the base gossip about. They have a big fight, he apologizes for cheating, and then gets mad at her for not forgiving him. Everyone in this movie is terrible.

Last is Burt Lancaster’s Sergeant Warden, supposedly a really good soldier, who has a crush on Karen, his boss’s wife.

Then there’s a whole lot of tedious military drama: Prewitt is punished for refusing to box; Maggio gets his ass kicked for defending his friend; Warden and Karen sneak around. They have that famous kiss on the beach with the waves washing all around them, but it’s undercut by Warden slut shaming Karen until she tells a sad story about coping with a miscarriage by becoming promiscuous, re-earning her virtue so that they can kiss again. Meanwhile, Prewitt meets Donna Reed’s Lorene at a brothel disguised as a dance club. Sinatra plays Prewitt’s obnoxious best buddy, all tiny and loud-mouthed, causing fights, getting insulted as a “wop,” and constantly interrupting his friend and his girlfriend when they’re trying to hook up. Prewitt reveals the secret of why he refuses to box: he once blinded an opponent. This reveal, like Karen’s sob story, is neither interesting nor emotionally resonant.

Prewitt keeps yammering about his bugle, playing it at the bar while everyone claps. Sinatra deserts his duty, gets drunk, and is sent to the stockade, where he’s tortured by a bully named Fatso. Warden and Karen argue about their future: she wants a divorce and for him to become an officer so they can be together, but he refuses. Prewitt and Lorene also argue: he wants to marry her but she’d rather go back to her hometown and become a respectable lady. Everyone is miserable (so am I).

Finally, stuff starts happening. Karen asks for a divorce but the Captain refuses; Prewitt is forced to box; the Captain is busted for staging illegal boxing matches; Sinatra escapes the stockade, delivers a dramatic monologue, and dies, inexplicably earning an Oscar. Prewitt cries and plays Taps for his dead buddy. He has a knife fight in an alley with Fatso, killing him, and goes on the run. Warden considers officer training to be with Karen but decides not to. Prewitt hides out at Lorene’s place and drinks.

Then the calendar flips to December 7, 1941. The Japanese attack. There are long stretches of real war footage of ships burning and planes strafing the ground. American soldiers shout, “Get ‘em boys!” and shoot up at the planes. It’s the most exciting part of the movie and has absolutely nothing to do with the main characters.

Prewitt is hungover and listening to the radio when he decides to join the fight despite Lorene’s pleas for him to stay. He leaves her sobbing in the dark, stumbles up to a group of soldiers, and is shot dead for looking suspicious. Warden identifies the body and, for some reason, calls him “a good soldier.”

The movie ends with Karen and Lorene sailing away from Hawaii, tossing leis into the sea. Lorene talks about Prewitt’s death as if it’s a tragic and heroic end to a bomber pilot instead of the truth about a murderer on the run who was gunned down by friendly fire.

This movie is dumb and boring. Everyone sucks and causes their own problems. We’re told but not shown how amazing these soldiers are, with no real development or intrigue. The takeaway is that Prewitt and Warden loved imperfect women but stayed loyal to the Army, leaving one dead and one heartbroken. Because who has time for love when there’s a war on? This movie sucks.

VERDICT: GUILTY