User reviews

It's a sad commentary that before the Armed Services were integrated post World War II by President Truman, the Red Ball Express was one of the few that black American soldiers could fully participate in and that one was relatively behind the lines.

Jeff Chandler plays the steely eyed commander of this bunch of formerly civilian truck drivers now chosen as a unit to supply Patton's advancing army with needed fuel. Among the cast is a young Sidney Poitier as one of the drivers. They may have been behind the lines, but the picture clearly shows their participation in the war wasn't an easy street.

Chandler's job is to weld this disparate bunch into a unit and he succeeds despite a lot of racial tension. The cast performs admirably in this picture.

One of the great stories of World War II was the rapid advance across France of Patton's army after the breakout from the Normandy beachhead. He could have never done it without the heroic efforts of the men depicted in this movie. It was Ike's and Patton's secret weapon and this picture an admirable tribute to them.

This is obviously a war film that will never be dated. Even after 60 years, it is fresh and relevant, because it tells about life the way it was in World War II, as experienced by people of the era, in a way that is credible.

We get a good mix of the "workmanship" of war, combined with "down time" and "deadly time". Chandler plays the officer who realizes how dangerous it is to be "lax", as one might be when 98% of your duty is simply workmanship, like driving, loading, and unloading supply trucks. It is the "unforeseeen" incident that gets you. It is being unready. It is the fluke or freak occurrence that will be deadly.

We have a star studded cast here, fairly common for old war films, but impossible for the twenty-first century, simply because of the dilution of movie making. Not that "dilution" is bad, but it's simply the fact that if everyone and his cousin is making a movie, then there are millions of actors, and thus no way for more than a few dozen to ever gain the sort of fame that hundreds of actors used to have.

The integration was splendid in this film, and believable. The white and black troopers behaved and spoke in a way that made you think they were from the mid twentieth century.

This is hard to do today. It is done today, but it is hard to sell that concept today. However, one must remember one thing in making World War II movies. If one makes it for the lingo of the era, as this film does, then it always remains true and credible. If one makes it for the lingo of 1990 or 2000, it will get a huge following for that generation, but in 80 years, it will be scoffed at by later generations, while films like "Red Ball Express" continue to stick around.

The acting is great, and the characters are great. Each character brings his own story to the screen, so we have many subplots. There are 3 major ones, each involving the major stars.

The subplots are handled well, and while the one with Chandler and Nicol is over the top, it is dramatic and theatrical, and well handled.

Chandler was the big star at the time. O'Brien is a minor mainstay, somehow always remaining a recognizable individual that is rare for leading man types. Poitier is a legend, with "Lillies", "Heat", "Dinner", and "Bedford" insuring his status. Drake will always remain a mainstay as a player of lovable rogues. This may be his best role, as he pretty much steals the show. Alex Nicol is the wild card. Films like this, "Then There Were Three", and "The Man From Laramie" will go back and forth to and from classic status, and he will be a huge name in classic film a hundred years from now. He probably never realized this while he was making "B" budget movies.

There is more to war than just the glory boys; 95% of the GIs in WW 2 (and all other wars) are never in the limelight as heroes, but they did more than their fair share of sacrifice. My father was one of those guys. He landed at Normandy, was with the infantry marching to the Hurtgen Forest, and getting overrun in the Battle of the Bulge. He was there for it all. He might not have been a hero in those battles (he was always looking for dry socks), but he was a hero to me. He and thousands of others, such as the men in The Red Ball Express, doing thankless jobs and sacrificing a lot more than just a few days lost sleep. Try driving 30 hours without sleep sometime. An underrated film, very similar to The Sorcerer, and the French film, Wages of Fear, but a bit more traditional. Good viewing.

Midway through the war, the March of Time devoted time to a filmed panel discussion - quite a new idea, then - as to how the war was to be won. One comment was "This is a Quartermasters' war. Solve the issue of logistics and you've won the war".

That might have been the mission statement of this, very watchable, film

RED BALL EXPRESS is alright I suppose . It's no masterpiece just a B war movie produced to be shown before a main feature . It involves a bunch of civilian truck drivers drafted into Uncle Sam's army in 1944 and it's those men who keep the allied front lines supplied . It's a rather predictable story of Americans fighting against Germans and where you think the most likable guy in the squad has bought the farm only for them to appear minutes later alive and well . Like I said very predictable

I guess somewhere the producers wanted to point out ( Though this would probably be known to an American audience in 1952 ) why every American war film made at the time always revolved around white American soldiers fighting . This was because the American army was segregated until 1947 and with very few exceptions black Americans didn't serve in the front lines . Despite the producers wanting to speak up fr the Black American war effort it looks painfully dated now since the blacks have lovely singing voices and sing in unison about beating Hitler which comes across as being very stereotypical and highly patronising and I doubt if a studio would be able to get away with this nowadays . Thankfully it serves to remind a wider audience in the 21st Century why war movie GIs are almost always white

In Red Ball Express, a group of soldiers whose job isn't normally featured in movies gets center stage. War pictures are usually about the daring Marines or the sailors who are desperate for a taste of the action, not the folks assigned to the boring jobs. These men are the truck drivers who deliver supplies to the fellows featured in the other movies. It's an interesting angle, and if you do find that aspect of the war intriguing, you'll probably like it.

Jeff Chandler stars as the head of the platoon, and of course (since there has to be some drama in a movie that doesn't scream 'drama') he clashes with the other men. Alex Nicol holds a grudge because his brother was killed in a battle involving Jeff. There are also some testy scenes involving Sidney Poitier and the white soldiers who begrudge being assigned to an integrated unit. I've seen much more riveting war movies in my day, but if it sounds interesting to you, give it a shot and see what you think.

The setup, in case you don't already know it, is this. The troops of the western Allies were bottle necked in Normandy, France, for the first month or so after the D-Day landings. The armies finally broke through the German defenses and Gen. George Patton's Third Army rapidly advanced across central and northern France. So rapidly that they outpaced their supply lines. The U.S. Army put together a truck convoy system to keep Patton's forces supplied and named it the Red Ball Express. Aside from managing to keep up with Patton's advance, the outfit is also noted for being one of the few integrated units in the U.S. armed forces at the time--I use the term "integrated" somewhat guardedly, since that usually meant white senior officers leading black junior officers and enlisted men, which is not what would first come to my mind as "integrated." Regardless, around 75% of the servicemen in the Red Ball Express were African Americans.

You wouldn't know that from this movie, where the ratio seems to have been reversed. However, I'm willing to give the filmmakers some credit for at least trying to address the integration issue at the time when they were working rather than castigate them for not doing what we might expect a present-moment filmmaker to do. That's not the real problem with this movie as a movie. Acting is not the problem with this movie, either, as another reviewer suggested. The acting is workmanlike--neither outstanding nor poor, just efficient. No, the weakness of this movie is that it is simply another cliché-ridden war movie; blame not the messengers, but rather the script. First, there is the clichéd unit. Our two lead characters have a troubled past and, surprise surprise, are forced to work together in the same outfit ("of all the gin joints in all the towns . .."). The unit has a romantic, it has a "runt" of the litter with glasses, it has a stolid misunderstood commander, it has a guy clearly from Brooklyn, and so forth. Just like any other war movie of the day (think of, say, "Air Force" or "Guadalcanal Diary"). What's new here for the time is that the filmmakers exchanged African Americans for some of the other stereotypical roster of "average Americans" you got in any war movie. Notably, there are NO characters who are clearly supposed to be white Southerners--an omission that itself speaks volumes about how sensitive race relations were in the early 1950s in the U.S. and especially in the then-recently desegregated U.S. armed forces.

The clichéd unit is indicative of the rest of the flick. You've seen this movie before. Bunch of misfits forced to work together overcome their differences and become a cohesive fighting unit--well, except here I never really got the sense we were watching an outfit of misfits. Yes, there's the guy with the racial issue vs. Sidney Poitier, and yes, there's the lead characters with the troubled past--one of whom is the main stumbling block that's keeping this outfit from fully coming together (what's that you say? That setup sounds like "Flying Tigers"? no wait, "Sands of Iwo Jima"? no, wait . . .)--but the movie is in too much of hurry to get this outfit on the road to really *show* how this outfit becomes a team. Essentially it just is. What else, you ask? How about the sweet-talking American and the saucy French girl? Rivalry with another outfit, with other outfit finally recognizing our heroes are indeed Heroes? The guys who think there mission is going to be a cakewalk only to discover the Harsh Reality Of War? Etc., etc.

Oh, the movie is solid enough and hits all the standard points--some action, some down time, some roughhousing, a romantic moment or two, some grousing, some "let's pull together" time--and some of the cast members are likable enough that, all told, you won't feel like you wasted your time watching this one. However, aside from the then-timely touch of trying to show an integrated outfit there's nothing here to see you haven't seen before.

Partially filmed in Fort Eustis, VA in 1951-52. I was in the army, at Ft. Eustis, waiting for my shipping orders when the cast and crew arrived. Many of us were used as background. Before they left, they gave us a special screening with most of the actors attending. Jeff Chandler was there. I met one of the actresses, who was with the cast, but not in the picture. We had some nice chats; I saw her off when they departed. I was 12 when world war II started and all of the war films were in black and white. Even the news was in black and white. I feel that black and white and war go together. There is nothing pretty about war. All wars are, more or less, the same; why should the films be any different?

The story was inspired by events in Louis L'Amour's life when he served in the European campaign. Louis L'Amour for those who may not know was a prolific writer of Westerns and single-handedly reinvented that literary form.

He told his WWII tales at the Brown Derby on Vine Stree in Hollywood. Louis often met with Cobb who ran the place. They often spoke of American Natives especially the Crow Indians in Wyoming and Montana. In any case, someone overheard Louis's WWII tales and it became this film.

I don't know if Louis L'Amour was ever credited. I don't think so. Much of this author's early life could easily serve as an exciting source of several entertaining and illuminating films.

I'd have to say that this is a very interesting war time movie. It focuses on not the battle front, but the people who were responsible for the supply line behind the battle front.

The soldiers who are mostly rejects from the battle front are assigned to the Red Ball Express the troops comprising 6000 trucks to bring food, ammunition, and fuel.

This is an innocent looking movie, but it taught me the most important lesson of my life. That everything moves on a commerce. That war is a commerce. It's the delivery of the goods to the points of consumption that is everything. Almost nothing else matters, because if soldiers and tanks didn't have ammo and gas, there's no action. Everything in this world is the same way.

This kind of organized mobility decides the outcome of the war. America had good commander to realize this, and tactical minds to put it into action. Nobody was named a hero, but Patton couldn't have done what he did without the Red Ball Express.

This makes the movie one of the most memorable of all war time movies. I really loved it.

This movie had its pluses and minuses for me, mostly minuses.

The big plus for me was the actual World War II film footage used. I had seen some of it before, but others were new to me, and interesting. If you're interested in our part in the war in France in the second half of 1944, it's worth watching for that.

It's also, to a lesser extent, interesting to see the few short scenes that attempt to deal with race relations. The solutions are simplistic, but at least the issues are raised. For a 1952 movie, that's not bad. Not notable, but not bad.

There are, however, a lot of negatives. In no particular order:

1. Way too much of the dialogue comes off as speeches written by the Army. It's hard to imagine anyone delivering them without a script in real life.

2. I got tired of the endless glorification of Gen. Patton to the exclusion of all other generals. You would have thought that he won the war in Europe single-handed.

3. The men of the Red Ball Express were evidently something like 80% Black. In this movie, it is suggested that the ratio is 50/50, but it looks more like 80% white. The developed characters are almost all white. It would have created a different dynamic if most of the drivers had been Black, and most of the developed characters. In 1952 there were still plenty of Red Ball Express veterans around who could have been interviewed for their stories. Some could even have been used in the movie.

4. The back story, between the lieutenant and a sarge before they entered the war, was uninteresting and unnecessary. It should have been scrapped for stories that grew out of the present situation.

5. The salvaging of one of the major (white) characters at the end is really contrived.

6. And speaking of whom: the depiction of the young French woman, Antoinette, and her father leaves a lot to be desired. When the white GI meets her, she seems uninterested. But when he makes to leave, she explains that an air corps unit has already been there. The GI says words to the effect of "I don't want their leftovers."

Our Army commanders did try to keep our men from mistreating French civilians, but of course it did happen, and it was traumatic for the French. That was, in part, because some units had been told going over that "French women are easy," and eager to have sex with American soldiers.

The scenes with Antoinette and her family are short, but they should have been less ambiguous on this issue. The parents do speak of the deprivation they have gone through, but it's all in French without any translation, so it would have been lost on most American viewers.

If a movie were made about the Red Ball Express these days, it wouldn't focus on the lives of white soldiers, of course. But even in 1952, this movie could have been a lot better if it had actually showed what made these men, black and white, heroes. But I don't know that 1952 was really ready for a redefinition of hero. To the extent that it deals with interactions with French civilians - and there isn't much of that - it could also have given a more realistic depiction of what they had gone through during the liberation of their country.

This is not my favourite from Budd Boetticher, not his best either, just a common war flick, but speaking of something rather important for US Army just after D Day for logistics matters, because all the French railway nets were destroyed. It had to be told about, I guess not other film did it. That said the cast is OK, with a convincing Jeff Chandler but not as good as in MERRIL'S MARAUDERS for instance. The real Red Ball Express took many Black soldiers who could not fight in regular troops because of racial segregation in US Army during this period. Yes, this story had to be told, but I guess many things, details have been changed from reality.

"Red Ball Express" is a film about the truck drivers who worked tirelessly to bring supplies to the men on the front lines...in this case, Patton's quickly advancing column of tanks. It is an important job that somehow gets overlooked in documentaries and textbooks...though supply lines are a huge reason the Allies won WWII.

Jeff Chandler plays the lieutenant in charge of the unit and he has to deal with a lot of things...the safety of his men, a disloyal sergeant, a driving partner who thinks the Lieutenant doesn't like him and more. All of it is MILDLY interesting and nothing more. Not a bad war film....just one that isn't particularly memorable.

10 stars!

My father was one of the truck drivers in the movie.

Just a fast scene of him driving a truck over a bridge....which was "on fire".

I remember him telling me he was a soldier during the Korean war, then somehow he mentioned this movie.

I was only about 12 yrs. Old at the time and with NO NETFLIX, etc., and only 3 CHANNELS , the odds if me ever watching it we're about ZERO

But I never forgot the name of the movie...and finally did a search for it.

More than the movie itself, it gives me find memories of my dad.

After D-Day, Patton's Third Army has outrun its supplies on their drive to Paris. A ragtag group of racially-mixed truck drivers is ordered on a mission called Red Ball Express. They are to drive supplies to Patton and unload and return and do it all again until the job is done. Lt. Chick Campbell leads the platoon and is in constant conflict with complaining wise guy Sgt. Red Kallek.

This is an ensemble cast. The biggest future star is Sidney Poitier although he doesn't have the biggest role. He does have an important role. This is a second tier war movie. I like the lesser known story material. I wish that this movie is worthy of the material. It has too many attempts at light weight comedy. I really hate this type of comedy which only detracts from any drama. It's a bit dumb. The characters are too broad. I don't know if the truck drivers would like to be represented this way.

The temptation is to be generous to this film because of it's central theme. However in terms of pure film making it is just bad, bad, bad. The plot meanders and the acting is mediocre to downright wooden. I'm writing this as I'm watching it, and to be honest I think I've just been too kind about the acting...

There is a strange thing about WWII films in black and white, it makes the events seem more distant, more unreal. Unfortunately it often seems to excuse bad film making.

Wooden acting!

I don't understand this minimum of 10 lines... forces me to pad...

Jeff Chandler is remarkably reliable as an actor, his name seeming always to warrant a good film, no matter the subject, although he seems to have been most to his advantage in war movies - his last one was "Merrill's Marauders", one of the toughest of all war films. This one is about the war behind the scenes, and although it does not share any of the great battles, the indefatigable truck drivers do indeed have plenty of work to do just surviving and getting through with their vital deliveries to the front, although naturally there are unavoidable casualties. So even if there are no great battles, the audience will have enough gunfire and fisticuffs and conflicts anyway, even among the Americans themselves. There are a few French girls for their relief, there is a wonderful scene with an entire French family, and naturally there are Red Cross sisters providing the soldiers with coffee and donuts occasionally, although they are mainly interrupted by the demands of war discipline. It's a wonderful film in spite of being a war film, and anyone could enjoy it and learn something from it - very few had any idea of the ordeals of the vital deliveries of victuals and stuff to the front before having seen this film. It touches on a masterpiece, anyone will be cheered up by it, with personal dramas and surprises as well, and you will feel it as a refreshment.

Some clown said that blacks were expendable and used for dangerous routes. Yeah combat isn't dangerous? It was a segregated Army in 1944. This 1952 movie with an integrated and respectful cast is pretty damn revolutionary.