Customer Reviews
Purple Heart 
2008-08-31
Typical Wartime Propaganda Film based very loosely on the Dolittle Raid.
Interesting to watch if you like these glossed over stories
Unrealistic and Unbelieveable Nonsense= A BAD Film 
2008-08-17
This film is BAD. Whoever wrote the screenplay should have their SAG card taken away. AMC is dead-on right about this film, it's poorly made trash. The court room scenes are not believeable AT ALL. Just a poorly made film all the way around. I'm giving my copy to the thrift store ASAP.
Dramatization of Fact 
2008-07-18
Despite what the Blame-America-First crowd might say, Uncle Sam doesn't sit around twisting his beard and hatching racist hegemonistic plots against nations populated predominantly by non-White peoples. The Japanese enemy has pretty much been given a relatively free ride due to the mind-numbing atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis in carrying out their Final Solution. But Allied prisoners had a 99% chance of surviving their stint in a German POW camp. Only 58% survived the Japanese camps and those that did had been reduced to mere skin and bones. The Japanese culture is not hung up on the value of a single human life, especially an enemy who has "dishonored" himself by surrendering. Anyone who thinks that the portrayal of Japanese in "The Purple Heart" is over-the-top American Jingoistic blather should talk to an Allied survivor of a Japanese POW camp. This is a well made, well acted film and an extremely effective piece of propaganda, aimed right dead-center at a more-than-deserving target.
tough not to like, and yet ... 2008-06-24
This movie is tough not to like, and yet it is clearly a propaganda piece of the "Jap-hating" war years.
The plot involves the sham trial of two B-25 crews from the Doolittle raid on Tokoyo captured in occupied China and brought to Japan for trial. The Japanese are besides themselves to determine where the raiding planes came from, and an Army general is convinced it was from a carrier. A naval admiral, responsible for defending the homeland, is equally convinced that it could not have been a carrier raid.
The acting by Dana Andrews and others is fine and you root for the crews as they are subjected to physical abuse and one-sided court room rules to extract the desired information. They are so alone and without defenses other than their trust in one another. And it is that interplay between the crew members and their support for one another that is the strength of the film.
The negative is that this is a war-time film with the Japanese presented as heartless, conniving, semi-humans. You expect at any moment for one of the Japanese officers to say, "So you Yankee dog, you see I understand your country. I U-C-R-A class of 1938!" If you can get past the bash the Japs undercurrent, its an pretty good film.
A Must See for those who do not with to forget... 
2008-06-02
Although AMC has the gall to call it "racist propaganda" and portray the Japanese as vicious, Japanse veterans from WWII all tell the same story: how they were, themselves, beaten by their officers, and how they were taught that the Americans were lower than animals, and no cruelty was considered unfit for the Americans.
The movie intimates the brutality and does not show what the Japanese actually did to these brave airmen.
Japanese wartime mentality was animalistic. The rape of Naking, as well as the treatment of American POWs are just two examples of the brutality of these people pre WWII.
Gen. MacArthur, though widely criticized for not prosecuting the Emperor, who had full complicity in war crimes and in the war of aggression, used Hirohito to bring peace. He brought over missionaries and set them up as school teachers, and did an amazing job in de-militarizing the Japanese people and bringing peace to a people who were raised on pagan Emperor worship. He changed their society from the ground up.
No Hollywood movie, thus far, has truly shown how brutal and animalistic the Japanese military were, and this movie is no exception. They did a mock trial and executed these brave men.
For AMC to call it racist propaganda because the judges cheered when news that MacArthur had left Corigidor shows only that they care more for political correctness rather than factual correctness.
don't miss this movie. Never forget what foreign aggression did to our nation while sleeping peacefully on a December Sunday morning, in 1941. Don't forget the bravery of the Doolittle raid, nor of the countless sacrifices made by young men to stop imperialistic barbariansism.
Purple Heart. 
2007-09-11
This is the story of the crew of a downed bomber captured after a run over Tokyo early in the war. Relates the hardships the men endure while in captivity and their final humiliation: being tried and convicted as war criminals.System Requirements:Run Time: 99 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 024543432920 Manufacturer No: 2243292
Different WWII film that speaks to the war today 2007-06-27
In my quest to see all of the great old films of WWII made in the 1940's, I bought this one and I'm glad I did!
It's very different from the "typical" battle-action films; this one is set mainly in Japan where American Army Air Corps pilots are put on trial for "war crimes."
In the course of their imprisonment, they are tortured to confess to crimes they didn't commit.
They have no real lawyers.
The Geneva Convention is never mentioned.
They go bravely and proudly to their deaths by execution.
All of it highlights not only the humane treatment we give enemy combatants now at Guantanamo Bay but also the fanatical aim of world domination of today's Islamofacist enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan is exactly like that of the Shinto/Bushido Japanese that we vanquished in WWII.
This movie is really a must see that acurately portrays the enemy in wartime as truly evil with none of the moral equivalence that we get from Hollywood and the Media these days.
Purple Heart 2007-06-08
Fantastic movie, have enjoyed it for many years on my copy on a VCR tape that I made off of TV, and now I have a great DVD version of it. The best part of the movie is that it is in the Full Screen format and not as how most come. I wish that your organization could get more movies in the Full Screen format, and not as most company's use the Wide Screen or that stupid letter boxed. Keep up the good work!!
"WE WILL BLACKEN YOUR SKIES AND BURN YOUR CITIES TO THE GROUND AND WIPE YOUR DIRTY LITTLE EMPIRE OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH" 2007-04-03
This is an inspiring movie to ALL Americans at this stage of the war vs Japan...in reality, three [3] of the captured USAAF crew were beheaded, others tortured unmercifuly...3 survived at war's end...with the release of, "The Purple Heart" at Christmas time [1944] well after the Gen Doolittle raid in April 1942, it hit home and in our hearts to the heroics of our courageous United States Army Air Force and Naval Forces in harm's way...this movie depicts Japan for all of her quick grabs in the Pacific War; yet, Japan was wide open and vunerable to air attack...it helped lift our morale to perservere, sacrifice and no more surrenders, ultimately paving the way for Japan's unconditional surrender forevermore in Aug/1945...it was NOT a propaganda movie; conversely, a cornerstone film for total victory over Japan who was our most formidable and cunning enemy we ever faced on the sea and on the land...Dana Andrews stirring lecture to that Japanese judge rang true as the "USAAF will blackened your skies, day and nite we'll come to burn your cities to the ground and wipe your dirty little Empire off the face of the earth"...that was a TRUISM and justly so...sadly, today's liberal Americans can't relate or comprehend to just what a UNITED effort it took to bring the Japanese Militarists to extinction in Aug/1945...the Japanese got what they readily deserved with A-Bomb interest...this movie was a harbinger of what was to come to the home-islands of Japan...WW2 was a great American lesson to America's enemies...I loved this wartime 1944 film about wartime April/1942....SSGT CHRIS SARNO-USMC FMF
A must see 2007-02-21
This is one of the all-time classic propaganda pieces of the war. Here we have the "typical" American unit made up of boys from Texas, Brooklyn, and Iowa, led by a steely officer (Dana Andrews)in a tribute to democracy. For my money, however, the scenery-chewing performance of Richard Loo as the Tojo-look-alike Japanese officer (complete with an appliance in his mouth to make his teeth look bigger...just like all of the print propaganda characatures of Japanese soldiers) steals the show. Loo's line "How many people will the white man sacrifice?" has become a cult classic with my colleagues and I and will likely remain so for some years. You've truly got to see this to believe it.
