Take the High Ground!

Directed by Richard Brooks, Take the High Ground! follows Richard Widmark’s tough-as-nails drill sergeant Thorne Ryan as he attempts to prepare a new class of recruits for the Korean War. It’s stirring subject matter that’s employed to pervasively (and distressingly) hit-and-miss effect by Brooks, as the filmmaker, working from Millard Kaufman’s screenplay, offers up a narrative that too-often emphasizes elements of a decidedly underwhelming, uninvolving nature – with this particularly true of an ongoing subplot detailing the tedious love triangle that forms between Ryan, a fellow drill instructor (Karl Malden’s Laverne Holt), and a local woman (Elaine Stewart’s Julie Mollison). It’s an entirely unnecessary digression that wreaks havoc on the movie’s forward momentum and eventually renders its positive attributes moot, which is a shame, ultimately, given that Take the High Ground! boasts a predictably top-notch performance by Widmark and a handful of admittedly engrossing sequences – including a confrontation between Ryan and Holt regarding the former’s treatment of his men and a tense scene wherein Carleton Carpenter’s Tex is pushed into shooting a target between Ryan’s legs. The end result is an almost passable endeavor that often feels like it should be so much better, with Widmark’s mostly electrifying turn generally carrying the picture through its many less-than-enthralling stretches.

** out of ****