Objective, Burma! (1945) on Netflix
Approved19452h 22mActionAdventureDrama
Capt. Charlie Nelson takes paratroopers into Burma to destroy a Japanese radar station detecting Allied flights to China. Gurkha guides, a Chinese captain and reporter Mark Williams go along.
- Netflix4.4/5
- IMDb7.3/106,005 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1944, a platoon of United States Army paratroopers under Capt. Charlie Nelson drops into Japanese-held Burma. Their orders are to locate a camouflaged Japanese radar station and blow it up. The station picks up Allied aircraft flying to China, and the raid comes ahead of the Allied invasion. Gurkha guides, a Chinese Army captain and Mark Williams, an American war correspondent, are attached to the platoon; the correspondent is along to write about the operation. The men reach the station and destroy it. When they arrive at the old airstrip where transport planes are meant to pick them up, they find Japanese troops there instead. Nelson calls off the rescue aircraft, and the platoon heads out on foot through jungle held by the enemy.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Objective, Burma! (1945)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was banned in the United Kingdom for seven years because its fictional plot turned the Burma Campaign into an entirely American operation and ignored that the British Empire did most of the fighting.
- At the 1945 London premiere the audience walked out in outrage at a line suggesting a few Brits might be nearby, and the film was re-released in Britain only in 1952, with an accompanying apology.
- Star Errol Flynn failed the military physical because of recurrent malaria, a heart murmur and latent tuberculosis; Warner Bros hid his IV-F rejection, and the press and critics branded him a "draft dodger".
- Objective, Burma! was scheduled for 60 days of shooting but ran more than 40 days over because of bad weather and constant script changes.
- The film used authentic Second World War American weapons, aircraft and gliders, plus a large amount of real combat footage shot by U.S. Army Signal Corps cameramen in the China-Burma-India theater and New Guinea.
- Director Raoul Walsh said Errol Flynn was on his good behavior during filming because he was typing his life story between takes, leaving him time for only about half a dozen drinks, "almost total abstention" by Flynn's standards.
