Jimmy L. ONE MINUTE TO ZERO (1952) is a hokey Korean War movie filled with tired war movie clichés, but it's easy enough to digest and Ann Blyth is soooooo pretty that you don't mind sitting through it.The initial conflict between Army colonel Robert Mitchum and United Nations worker Ann Blyth soon blossoms into romance, but can Blyth let herself get involved with a soldier during wartime, knowing he's always in harm's way? Meanwhile, Mitchum and company have tough decisions to make trying to hold back the guerrilla fighters, who hide among the swarms of refugees.Made while our boys were over there fighting the commies, the film has an understandable propagandistic slant, but it's interesting to see a movie of the era set during the Korean War, rather than WWII. And the drama does touch upon some interesting moral gray areas.Robert Mitchum is always good, but Charles McGraw nearly steals the show in a solid supporting performance as Mitchum's gruff sidekick in the field. Also look for Alfred, the husky young janitor from MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (1947), as one of the soldiers.The film's romantic theme seems to be the song "When I Fall in Love", as popularized by Nat King Cole.

joeshade This film was always one of my favorites even as a child. I really enjoyed any performance by Charles McGraw, a complement to any film cast. One aside to the making of the film, one night after filming Mitchum and McGraw went to a local bar and apparently there were some servicemen there as well. One of the servicemen started a fight with McGraw who was much shorter and slighter than the serviceman. Mitchum stepped in and WHIPPED the serviceman who reportedly was "special forces" and a combat veteran. Mitchum fought to protect his friend McGraw and earned the respect of everyone there. Mitchum has always been known as a pretty tough character himself.

JimB-4 How someone as workmanlike as director Tay Garnett could take talents the like of Robert Mitchum and Charles McGraw and crank out this piece of sausage is pretty hard to fathom. It's not that the story is so bad for its time (early 1950s), but that the execution is so poor. Mitchum manages to be good insofar as the worst dialog of his career allows him, and McGraw is loaded down with even worse talk. The chemistry between Mitchum and love interest Ann Blyth is nil, the story veers from sickeningly sweet to nauseatingly real (courtesy of some actual combat footage of various people during or just after being roasted alive, etc.), and the majority of the supporting performances are amazingly amateurish for a studio picture of its time. Mitchum plays an infantry officer in Korea at the beginning of the war there. He has a bit of a queasy stomach after slaughtering a bunch of civilian refugees because a few Communist infiltrators were hiding among them, but even his initially outraged girlfriend comes to see that "even a doctor amputating a leg has to cut off some good flesh with the bad," and pretty soon, this mini-My Lai is forgotten (without anyone apparently considering whether a wiser choice than massacre might have existed). But it's the amateurishness of the direction, the high-school-play sort of staging and dialog that make "One Minute to Zero" (a title without meaning or explanation in the film) an anomaly: how could these people, whose talent is undeniable, have made such a silly and childish little home movie. The philosophy of war, the details of combat and life in a war zone in general, even the romance, all are done with the sophistication and expertise of the average seven-year-old boy. This is the kind of movie Robert Mitchum was often accused of sleepwalking through, but in reality, were it not for him, it would be utterly unbearable.

semperfijack The one good thing about this so-so Korean war film is the music score by Victor Young. It features the great romantic song "When I Fall in Love" Although not sung in the film (therefore not Academy Award nominated) it was recorded by Nat "King" Cole and others. Cole's is the best and is featured on many of his albums.