MacArthur (1977)

Gregory Peck dons the uniform of the four/five star American General who rose to prominence in the far east theatre of operations during World War Two. We start with the Japanese over-running the Philippines and seeing him strategically withdraw to the relative safety of Australia. There he finds that there is little appetite in Washington to take the fight to the enemy, indeed there’s considerable uncertainty as to whether they can even defend Australia itself. Fortunately, his relationship with President Roosevelt (Dan O’Herlihy) sees his plan to invade Luzon approved and back he goes to press home the allies’ increasing advantage and, with the help of the atomic bomb, take the surrender. With Truman (Ed Flanders) now in the White House and troubles brewing in Korea between them and the Soviet-backed red Chinese, there are yet more eggshells for this officer to tread carefully upon as battle lines are being drawn both on that peninsula and back in a Washington anxious not to be drawn into anymore foreign wars. Meantime, his press officers are ensuring that he stays front and centre of the public agenda and there are even talks of him running for political office himself. This is all a rather dry chronology with Peck doing fine, but never really imbuing his character with much of the charisma that MacArthur himself undoubtedly had. Nor do we really get much of an insight into the geopolitics of the time, or of the scale of the fighting - which is largely left to a few archive inserts from warships. I suppose there are parallels to be drawn with George C. Scott’s depiction of “Patton” (1970) but this comes off very much the more lacklustre as it tells it’s story episodically.