Never So Few

For the next week or so I'll take a look six films that are in a boxed set called Steve McQueen: The Essential Collection. How essential is a question, since it doesn't contain some of his best known films (there is another set that contains The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven).

The first film, chronologically, Never So Few, from 1959, doesn't star McQueen. He's a supporting player, but it's important historically because it was his first big film (after the B horror picture The Blob and his television work in Wanted: Dead or Alive). He replaced Sammy Davis Jr. in the role, because Davis pissed off the star, Frank Sinatra. Frankly, Davis would have been interesting, sociologically, since this is a World War II film and the troops were still segregated then.

The film concerns a squad of American and British officers that are leading a group of local Burmese soldiers as they try to hold off the Japanese. Sinatra is the captain in charge, and he's the kind of guy who does it his way, a way that would make Dick Cheney proud. Whether it's torture, executing prisoners, or openly defying orders, Sinatra goes by his gut. I'm sure this was intended as good, old-fashioned American gumption, but to modern sensibility it is awfully obnoxious.

Whatever the movie's politics, it's just plain bad. The director, John Sturges, made much better films with McQueen (including The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven) but seems lost here. This was in the era of a lot of bloated World War II epics, but for every great one (like Bridge on the River Kwai) there were some turkeys, too, like this one. The pacing is glacial, gummed by a romance between Sinatra and Gina Lollobrigida (the poor man's Sophia Loren) that is completely unnecessary.

As for McQueen, he's cast in a role that he would go on to play many times, a kind of can-do tough guy who knows all the angles. He steals the picture right from under Sinatra's nose, though he's given far too little to do. Also in the film is Charles Bronson in an early role. He plays a Navaho code talker, and provides some of the "conscience" of the film. He is angry every time another soldier calls him Hiawatha, but turns right around and refers to the Burmese as "gooks."

Look for George Takei, who would later be Sulu in Star Trek, in a very small role, as well as James Hong as a Chinese general. Who is James Hong? Why he's the maitre 'd in the "Chinese restaurant" episode of Seinfeld. "That will be five, ten minutes!"