Judging by Go for Broke‘s posters and related promotional material, you’d think that this Robert Pirosh picture is yet another post-WWII jingoistic war film. We see strapping blonde Van Johnson hoisting a rifle and chasing the Italian ladies.
The title, too, evokes visions of Battleground (1949)–also starring Van Johnson and directed by Robert Pirosh–and the wartime Gung Ho (1943).
No doubt the style of promotion was intended to make the film palatable to the general public in 1951-1952.
Those were sly disguises for this sharp film.
Instead, Van Johnson takes a distant back seat to the real stars: the 442nd, composed of second-generation Americans born of Japanese parents–Nisei.
Johnson seethes with a quiet sourness when he realizes that he’s in charge of all of these so-called Buta-head (or Buddhahead) Nisei from Hawaii and Kotonks from the mainland U.S.
In fact, one layer of the movie is the internal tension between the Buta-heads and the Kotonks.
Warner Anderson’s Col. Pence issues a corrective toward the beginning of the film when Van Johnson’s character requests a transfer to another unit.
First, he says, they’re not “Japs” but “Japanese-Americans” or Nisei. Second, they’re all volunteers. And third, the White officers are actually referred to as haoles, a Hawaiian term for non-Hawaiians.
The story is told with finesse and restraint. Johnson’s character is no pig-headed bigot; he’s just quietly aggrieved and confused.
By the end of the movie, Van Johnson’s view of the men of the 442nd changes, but it’s a very slow realization.
There are no long Capra-esque monologues about the indignities faced by the 442nd. Nor is this the shove-it-down-your-throat social commentary that modern viewers are so accustomed to.
Characters say how they feel, but it’s within the dialogue and it feels natural. In fact, most of the soldiers–with the exception of Don Haggerty as Sgt. Culley–aren’t really put out by the 442nd soldiers at all.
Go for Broke is now in the public domain, so it’s available on YouTube and on Amazon Prime for free.
