They Were Expendable

They Were Expendable follows two American naval officers, Lieutenant John Brickley and Lieutenant Rusty Ryan, who command a squadron of PT boats in the Philippines during the early days of the Pacific War. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the small, lightly armed craft are finally sent into action against a far larger Japanese force. The crews run messages between the islands and take on enemy ships and aircraft while Allied forces lose ground in the Philippines.

John Ford directed and produced the film, the ninth of the thirty-one features he directed in chronological order, coming between Tobacco Road and My Darling Clementine. Robert Montgomery and John Wayne head the cast as Brickley and Ryan, with Donna Reed, Jack Holt, Ward Bond and Marshall Thompson among the credited players, a group that runs to 111 names. Frank Wead and Christina Stead wrote the screenplay, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer produced the picture, which runs 135 minutes.

Released in December 1945, the film drew an IMDb rating of 7.2 from around 10,000 votes, while its TMDB rating stands at 6.5 from roughly 140 votes. A film critics' rating of 8.2 from 12 reviews sits above both audience scores, indicating stronger approval from the small group of reviewers than from the wider public.