The Young Lions Details

This Second World War potboiler, adapted by Edward Anhalt from the doorstop novel by Irwin Shaw, oozes self-importance in every scene. The action leapfrogs from Paris to America and from North Africa to Bavaria, taking nearly three hours to unravel. But, while the script is turgid and Edward Dmytryk's direction often slows to a crawl, the picture is an absolute corker for three reasons: Marlon Brando as a straw-blond nice guy, who becomes a Nazi and ends up a martyr, Montgomery Clift as a Jewish GI and Dean Martin as a cowardly Broadway star who's Clift's fellow draftee. They fight over women (Hope Lange, May Britt), over principles, and overact only some of the time, as they stumble towards a climax where irony rules the day.

Three strands are loosely interwoven into a would-be modern epic; the result is well mounted and generally absorbing but uneven and decidedly overlong.